While addressing limiting beliefs and reframing negative thoughts is incredibly powerful and a game changer for those of us that learn to reframe and turn limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs, is there a limit to how far this practice can take us? Does it work on all the thoughts that we think? This is important because our thoughts impact our life.

Our thoughts impact our life. They make a difference.

In my journey to change and improve my situation, I started reading and listening to people that had already improved their situation. It helped me immensely to engage this type of content. It provided me with ideas, insight, and hope.

Since becoming more intentional about my personal growth I’ve noticed a change in my default thoughts or responses to questions. I have stronger answers to certain questions and some of the questions that would have deflated me in the past (due to a lack of confidence) don’t. Listening to podcast interviews from people that do research on the brain, or understand behavior in an eye opening way, or who have discovered a tool to help them gain traction in life, helps me continue to rid myself of straggling negative thoughts that want to stick around.

This can all be summarized by remembering that what goes in will also come out. I have heard this theme in several podcasts that discuss making changes in your life as well as in personal growth and productivity focused online courses. The idea is that if you fill your brain with inconsequential content, stress inducing content, or negative content, that’s what will come out. On the other hand, if you fill your mind with empowering content, that’s what will come out.

Therefore, if we are facing our negative thoughts and working to overcome limiting beliefs it can be helpful to also surround ourselves with content that reinforces what we want to think about and express.

Overcoming thoughts at a deeper level.

While addressing limiting beliefs and reframing negative thoughts is incredibly powerful and a game changer for those of us that learn to reframe and turn limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs, is there a limit to how far this practice can take us? Does it work on all the thoughts that we think?

In my experience, the answer to that last question is no. At least not in the way it’s explained by the personal development world. While the strategy for overcoming limiting beliefs helps me in terms of what jobs to apply to and when thinking about what I am capable of accomplishing in a day or a year, there are some thoughts that need a deeper practice to overcome.

What are these thoughts?

If you read my article that introduced this category for my blog, it mentioned good and bad in the unconscious heart. What the personal development world doesn’t talk about are thoughts that feed in an unhealthy way on our inner desires. These are the types of thoughts that need more than the beginning steps of reframing.

Our inner desires run amuck (called passions) lead to thoughts that need a deeper strategy- a strategy that enters into the heart through what is called the prayer of the heart. These thoughts and the deeper strategy are the topic of the book I mentioned in last month’s introductory post.  It is also the source for the remaining paragraphs in this article.

The book is Confronting and Controlling Thoughts.  The writing on thoughts found in this book is very accessible. It is extremely helpful for gaining insight into the urgency of not simply learning to reframe thoughts, but to guard your mind from negative and distracting thoughts.

An introduction to logismoi.

These negative and distracting thoughts are called logismoi. There are actually 2 kinds of logismoi: 1) thoughts of peace and joy and 2) thoughts of anxiety and turmoil. The thoughts that we need to confront urgently are those that are of anxiety and turmoil, those that distract, and those that keep us focused in a negative direction other than focused on God.

In “Confronting and Controlling Thoughts”, St Thalassius is mentioned as describing the source of logismoi as being from 1) the senses 2) memory and 3) the body’s temperament. What we take in, what we remember, and our temperament are sources or entry ways for logismoi to enter our heart.

Positive Input

This brings me back to what I mentioned at the beginning of the article. What we take in will come out.

A quote in Confronting and Controlling Thoughts was helpful for my own understanding of this connection.

The mind is like a clock that is constantly running down, someone said. It has to be wound up daily with good thoughts. We need to start storing God’s powerful words in our memory bank as well as in our heart.

from Confronting and Controlling Thoughts by Anthony M. Coniaris

Taking in readings from the Bible is an important part of filling your mind and heart with the positive thoughts needed to overcome passions and logismoi.

What does this have to do with personal development?

It’s important because our thoughts impact our life!

A person that thinks confidently sees opportunities. A person that thinks they will never amount to anything misses opportunities. Consider thoughts that lead us to feel overly anxious, depressed, or bitter. These thoughts might not easily be affected by the typical personal development strategy of reframing. If unattended these negative thoughts will affect our life in negative ways.

If a thought that is unhealthy for us to keep focusing on takes root in our hearts, we are not able to grow.

More to Come.

There is so much that I could write about this topic. I’m sure there will be more to come.

In fact, next month, if all goes according to plan, I will continue this mind and thoughts theme by taking a look at the book, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives. Be sure to check back on the 4^th Thursday of the month for the next post in the faith and behavior category.

Until next time, have you tried reframing certain thoughts only to feel like you can’t overcome them?

Behavior Challenge:  Is there a scripture that you can memorize to help keep your mind thinking positive thoughts?

Resources:

Still not sure what I mean by passions? Here’s a short intro post on the essence of the passions.

Not sure what the prayer of the heart is? Read this short into post on the prayer of the heart.

Other Posts:

I mentioned in my introductory post on faith and behavior the importance of making connections between science and faith .

Why all this talk about attitude? Does attitude really make a difference? Will attitude really make or break you? Perhaps these are similar to the questions you are asking. Or maybe you wonder if there are ways to monitor or cope when our attitudes are in transition from a negative to positive focus. You might also be wondering how to better develop and grow attitudes that will help you move forward in life and be successful. If this is you, you are in the right place.

3 Areas of Focus in the Attitude Category

There are three subtopics that I want to address through the articles in the attitude category of this blog: importance, coping skills, and growth.

Importance

I want to highlight the importance of different aspects surrounding our attitudes: the environment that we’re in, the outlook that we have. If we’re feeling stuck or we are holding back for some reason, it’s important to know why. It’s also important to know what might help us stay more positive.

Coping Skills

When we are in a place of transition do we have the right coping skills to help us stay positive and focused?

Growth

This is along the lines of how we can develop our attitudes and what influences them. Let’s learn about our attitudes so that we can leave them in the past, adjust them, or allow them to come with us.

While these are the 3 areas of focus, a single post might hit on any or all of them. You can expect posts on attitude on the 3^rd Thursday of the month.

Join the mailing list so you don’t miss a post focused on attitude!

Suggested Articles in the Attitude Category

Read previous posts in the attitude category:

Why is personal growth important?

Develop a grateful mind

How to handle fear (the courage habit way)

Journal prompts for the end of the year

Is there a secret to confidence?

3 Reasons to change your bad habit

When learning about behavior we often think about things such as learning why we do things the way we do or how we can take what we learn about behavior and apply behavior change strategies. However, there is another aspect that sometimes gets left out. Faith. Does faith have a place in personal development? Can it help us know good help from bad help?

Make connections with your faith

What I have done to keep faith a part of my learning about behavior is to look for connections.

When I find practices and studies on behavior that are grounded in science, I look to see that the practices and results hold up against my own life experiences or the experiences of those around me. Yet, these are not the only connections that I seek. I make connections between what I learn in the science to what I learn in my faith.

Good Help or Bad Help?

There are a lot of resources out there for people that want to change their behavior. If you start the journey to improve yourself you will find that there are many people out there with reasons and practices to improve yourself. How do you know good help from bad help?

Being intentional about what we believe was the topic of last week’s article. It discussed how different people or groups can influence our thinking and behaviors, often without our even realizing it. In today’s article I suggest that we also need to be intentional about incorporating our faith into our personal development plan.

Faith is the lens

Faith is one of those important things to remember when we learn about behavior and start to apply it to our lives.

Faith is important because it provides you with a lens for looking at the theories for understanding behavior and applying what you learn. Without that lens you might follow theories or practices that might be harmful rather than helpful. Or, even if it’s not harmful, it still might not provide you with the full or complete picture of the behavior or practices that you are trying to change or improve.

Have you been looking for connections with your faith as you navigate the personal development world? Are there self-help or personal development practices that you question since they don’t line up with your faith?
(Share them in the comments section of this post. Perhaps I can write a future post addressing these things.)

Behavior Challenge: Reflect on how you currently incorporate your faith into your self-help and personal development strategies and goals. Are you happy where you are or do you want to grow in that area?

Other articles you might enjoy:

• Read more on the connections that I am making with faith and behavior and personal development.
• Read Where do beliefs come from?

Sometimes we act out of beliefs that are passed down to us from the media, society, or others that we know. These beliefs aren’t always intentionally accepted, but they can become a part of how we look at the world. When we don’t realize that our behavior is affected by what we think, a view like that is easy to miss. However, when the connection between beliefs and behaviors becomes clear we start to realize the importance of being intentional about our views. This means reflecting on the questions of where do beliefs come from and how can we form intentional, or better, beliefs?

Where do beliefs come from?

When I write about beliefs in this article I am talking about how we see the world and ourselves from different domains of life. For example, there are beliefs that we hold about our health and fitness. There are beliefs that we hold on finances. There are beliefs we hold about singleness and marriage. There are many categories I could name. In each one of them, the view we hold often times come of a variety of sources.

In my journey of personal growth it has become apparent that knowing where your beliefs come from is important. There are probably things in our lives that we believe, but perhaps we haven’t taken an intentional look at why we believe them.

A look at fitness beliefs

Let’s take a look at the domain of fitness. We all probably have thoughts about fitness that don’t really come from ourselves. One of these shows a limited view of how we think we should be active and exercise. As if there are one or two right ways and the rest are inadequate and therefore not of value.   

Think about it this way. Many people have this default idea that working out means that you go to the gym. If you aren’t a gym person you probably don’t work out. Yet, you can work out in other ways. You can swim, or run, or join a dance class. You can do a lunch time walk or sprint up the stairs once every day. These things are also working out.

I bet you can come up with other ways to work out that fit you and your current situation. We can get to these ideas when we realize that we’ve been thinking about our workout from the wrong perspective. Perhaps it was someone else’s perspective that we adopted and it’s time to get in touch with what working out means for us.

3 Tips to Intentional Beliefs

An intentional look at what we believe is important as we go through life and aim to grow. To continue to do things in the same way as everyone else without reflecting doesn’t always lead to the best results.

Here are 3 tips towards intentional beliefs:

1. Ask – Ask yourself how you came to this belief.  
2. Acknowledge – Acknowledge where your view originated. Is it from you, a parent, a friend, society, social media?
3. Answer  or Affirm– Answer that belief with a different one if it needs to change or affirm it if it’s a belief you have chosen.

Can you think of one area in your life where you have let outside influences determine your thoughts or beliefs about something?

Behavior Challenge:  Reflect on areas where you might be struggling to grow and see if there are any beliefs that might be holding you back. Then try to answer that belief with a different belief.

For more reading:

3 Tips to Jump Start Your Personal Reflection Habit

Do You Enjoy Silence and Reflection?