The Power of Your Thoughts
“Watch your thoughts: they become your words. Watch your words: they become your actions. Watch your actions: they become habits. Watch your habits: they become character. Watch your character for it becomes your destiny”
-Upanishads
Your thoughts are the most powerful aspect of your life, they not only create every aspect of your life they also dictate how you will engage with every facet of your life. One thought creates a story and once the story is created the brain looks for any information to make the story true. Your brain provides you only with the information that confirms your thoughts making it easier and easier to continue to replay the story. Each new piece of information your brain provides confirms and solidifies the story your thought created. The more the story is confirmed the more it becomes not only the story of the moment; it becomes the story of your whole life. In every situation you are in you are the character you have created living the story you believe to be true about yourself. You speak in a way that reaffirms this story and the way you speak (or don’t speak) attracts certain people to you that again confirm your thoughts about yourself and your story. The people you have attracted into your life based on how you speak engage with in a certain way. The way the people in your life engage with you reaffirms your story and you engage with them in a way that aligns with your story, once again confirming your story and thoughts to be true. You form habits, ways of being and doing that strengthen the plot line of your story. These habits then formulate the character that is needed to continue to play out this story, every day for the rest of your life.
Think of the expressions “this always happens to me” or “that is such a me thing to do.” These are thoughts, these are thoughts that you have about a story you have told yourself that you continue to reaffirm through your thoughts. We have all created a character we play in a life we have concocted based off our own thoughts.
Your thoughts can be your biggest enemy; always looking for the information that makes you the victim in the situation, passive and helpless in your life. Your thoughts can also be your greatest asset; finding the information that empowers and propels you on your life’s journey.
Your thoughts have so much power, they create the world you live in, dictate who you are in that world, and how you behave in the world.
All of this said you have the power to re-write your story, to change the main characters and realign your destiny. It is a silly belief to think that because something has been one way that it always will be; however, it is a common belief because it is safer to stay in what we know than it is to welcome the unknown. We don’t know what lies ahead in our new story, we don’t know how far we may fall, or what pitfalls await us. The unknown is scary and that is why no matter how unfulfilling the old story may we be, we choose to relive it and reaffirm it.
It takes a lot of work to look at your life and to question the story your thoughts have created. Who are you in the story of your life? The truth of the matter is you get to decide.
