1 Minute Thought Change – Stop Worrying, Control Thoughts

Posted September 29, 2011

Are you aware of how many thoughts you have each day ? Research has shown that humans can process between 12,000 to 50,000 thoughts each day. This is approximately between 3.03 to 1.15 thoughts per second if we exclude the thoughts we have during an 8 hr sleep state.

This information isn’t as interesting as the fact that only 5%, yes 5% of our thoughts are new. The other 95% are old thoughts. Old thoughts are defined as those thoughts that you’ve repeated and thought about on a regular basis.

60% of these repetitive thoughts are thoughts that you have about yourself and the world around you. We call this our internal dialogue i.e. the conversations you have with yourself that no one else is party to. They are usually negative in some way and are often centred around your inabilities and failings.

So they could be about :

• How ineffective you are
• Worrying about what you did or didn’t do
• Fears around not having enough, enough money/enough success/enough recognition
• Having got something or done something wrong
• Anxieties around feeling that others may reject you or what you’ve done
• Limiting beliefs around not being good enough in whatever realm
• Judging other people and what they’ve done or not done/said or not said
• And many many more, too many to detail and I am sure you get the gist

So take a moment now , sit quietly and simply become aware of your thoughts

• Are you anxious?
• Are you worried?
• Are you fearful?
• Are you judging yourself?
• Are you believing ineffective and negative things about yourself?

Whatever your answers were, there is an easy process you can carry out that will alleviate some of what you are experiencing.

Remember you can choose the thoughts you have, just as you choose to have negative ones you can choose to have something else instead.

You are in charge which means you can take control and you can create NEW thoughts that will allow you to feel better and when you feel better everything else and everyone else around you feels better.

So go ahead now and do the …

One Minute Thought Change

• Identify one recurring negative thought and write it down
• What do you see when you look at the words? Write this down
• What do you hear when you read the words internally and out loud ? Write this down
• What feelings do the words evoke ? Write this down
• Is this something you would like to let go of ?
• If the answer is NO, for what purpose do I want to keep this negative thought ? write that down
• If the answer is YES, what do I want instead ? write that down
• Now read the new sentence, the thought you want instead
• How has it changed how you feel ? write that down
• How has it changed your thought ? write that down

Fantastic … how was that?

You have just learned an easy an effective way of being in charge of your thoughts !

Enjoy the process