What are you MAKING IT MEAN?

The events and circumstances that occur in our life are neutral, regardless of whether they happen today or in our past.  I’ve written about neutral circumstances before. How we interpret our circumstances and what we MAKE IT MEAN will determine how we feel about events. You know there’s people that interpret all the circumstances in their life as negative, and there are people that interpret no matter what’s going on for them as positive. So two people can have the exact same experience, and one of them can use it to have a very positive, wonderful life, and one of them can use it to have a horrible life. How do you explain that if the event itself is the horrible thing? You can’t. Your circumstances are neutral. What you MAKE THEM MEAN determines your entire life. 

There are things in the world that happen that we have no control over; other people, our past, things that have happened to us. We do have control over how we think about those things and what we MAKE THOSE THINGS MEAN.

Some people feel as though they don’t have control over their thinking. The reason you feel out of control initially is because you aren’t aware of what you’re thinking. The first step has to be becoming more aware of how you’re thinking about your life and WHAT YOU ARE MAKING IT MEAN.

I am talking about really thinking about what is going on in your mind and really thinking about why you think what you think, and if you want to continue to think the way that you’re thinking.

A lot of times your brain has not been deliberately programmed. You haven’t been telling your mind what to do, so your mind is busy telling you what to do. You’re obeying it unconsciously. When you can start recognizing, “The reason I feel this way is because of what I’m thinking,” that can really change everything for you, because that awareness in and of itself can help with the process of change.

You might get to the point where you are thinking, “All I’m aware of is all my crappy thoughts and all my crappy feelings. Now what?” 

The answer is, that once you become aware of your thinking patterns and how you’re reacting to them, the first step really becomes catching yourself before you react. When you recognize that something is just a thought and not something you have to react to, that’s when you can really start changing those behavioral patterns.

The next step is to start deciding what you want to think on purpose. If you don’t tell your brain what to focus on or what to think about, it will go to old patterns. The brain likes to do what it’s really good at. What it’s really good at is stuff that it’s done a lot of. Unfortunately, for many of us, that’s a lot of very negative anxiety-producing, frustration-producing thinking.

Many of  us feel out of control because we feel like we don’t know why we do what we do. “I don’t want to eat that much food. I don’t want to yell at my kids. I don’t want to yell at my husband. “I don’t want to be surfing the internet for hours and hours, but I just can’t seem to control it.” The reason why we’re unable to control our reactions in our life is because we’re unaware of the thoughts driving them. Once we become aware, it becomes much easier to notice the thought before the reaction happens and to make a deliberate choice. 

“Once I know that I’m having a lot of negative thinking, you tell me that I can direct my mind to become more positive. What I want to do is forget about all that negative thinking and just focus on the positive thinking.” It can’t be done that way. Allow your thoughts. You decide whether you’re going to react to them or not. Once you allow them, that’s when you can increase your awareness of them. When you resist something, you block it out of your consciousness. It does not mean you stop thinking it. It certainly doesn’t mean you stop reacting to it, because it’s unconscious. When you resist that negative thought you can’t understand it, and I like to understand and allow everything because then, I can own it and release it. When we react to ourselves or avoid ourselves, that’s when we go into these compulsive behaviors, and that’s when we start acting in ways that we don’t want to act.

If you notice you are MAKING IT MEAN, “I’m never going to make it here”, “I’m wasting my time”, “I’m never going to be able to lose weight”, “I made a big mistake”, “I’m not as beautiful as those people”, … whatever it is that comes up for you, greet that thought with compassion. Notice that’s what you’re thinking.

Be curious why you are making that choice to think that. Acknowledge that it is something you’re choosing to think, and be compassionate with yourself about it. Just that in and of itself makes it so much easier to release it, because as long as you’re pushing it away from you, it’s really hard to release it.

Before you start trying to change your thinking, notice how you feel when you think that thought. For instance, when you think, “I hate this country,” how do you feel and then what do you do? Or when you think, “I have a fat body”, how do you feel, and then what do you do? Ironically, most of us eat when we think that way. That’s just a good pattern to understand and be compassionate and non-judgmental about. 

I like to think, “Is this something I want to continue to think or not?”, and then, you can start focusing on what you do want to think. Be careful, because you have to believe your new thought. Often I suggest to my clients that they go for a neutral thought. For example I would suggest a thought like, “I am living in a different country” as a neutral thought instead of trying to believe that they can love their new country.  Or “I have a body” instead of trying to love their body. Just making that shift from a negative to a neutral thought can be huge.

Once you’ve gotten some thoughts that you really do believe in, then, you need to practice them. Remind yourself what you want the brain to be thinking. You need to feed it what you want it to do. It doesn’t really care if it thinks negative thoughts or positive thoughts. It just does what it’s told. If it’s been told a lot of negative things its whole life, that’s what it knows how to do really well. If it’s been told a lot of positive things its whole life, that’s what it knows how to do. The awesome part is that you can decide to change that. If you want to think different thoughts, you’re the one that can program it.

The problem for most of us is we believe we are our thoughts. We believe that what we think is true about ourselves, and we think that what we think is who we are. If we’re thinking a bunch of negative thoughts about ourselves, then we are going to believe that we are negative people. The truth is, those are just thoughts. That’s not who we really are. Those are just thoughts that we have decided to think unconsciously, and we can decide to think something different.

Managing your mind and deciding what you want to MAKE THINGS MEAN is the secret to a happy life. If you are constantly thinking positive, wonderful things that you truly believe about yourself, you are going to feel much happier than if you’re thinking thoughts that are negative about other people or yourself. Notice, whenever you have a thought, how does that thought feel? Do I want to keep thinking that?

Now, if you try to approach this process with resistance and with anger, then you’re going to start beating yourself up for having the negative thoughts, and then you’re going to try and push away the negative thoughts, and then you’re going to pretend like you don’t have the negative thoughts. What you need to do is step back and say, “That’s a thought. That’s interesting. That’s fascinating. Why would I choose to think that I don’t have any self-worth?”