Keith Battle - What's Going on in My Head? - Part 4

Our thoughts are so powerful that our lives stem from our thinking. Everything that shows up in our lives starts in our heads. We discussed this in this series, focusing on the importance of speaking positively to ourselves and engaging in healthy self-talk. Imagine being in a conversation or hearing something on the radio, online, or on television that is so negative it compels you to change the station. You may not want to be around that negative energy, so you politely excuse yourself from the situation. If you possess the wisdom to do that with external conversations, you should also apply it to your inner dialogue. If you are speaking negatively to yourself, you need to say, «We—hey, we are not doing this.» Love yourself enough to self-correct your internal conversations and ensure your thoughts shift from complaining to gratitude. There is always something to be grateful for, so focus on that. Get your mind right—amen! That has been the crux of what we’ve been discussing.

In part three of this series, I talked about how we tend to hold on to negative thoughts. We can accrue as many as 56,000 of them, yet we stubbornly cling to the darkness. Some people even seem to have an addiction to negative thinking—it’s a familiar spirit. You can think yourself into tragedy and darkness. You might think, «They’re going to take advantage of me; it’s not going to work out; they’ll probably steal something from me.» You’re just playing a movie in your own head when none of it has actually happened. Some individuals don’t feel like they deserve to be happy, though nobody is likely to raise their hand and admit it; pride prevents that. There’s a whole lot of this going on, and I’m saying that you need to stop those thoughts.

Last week, I shared five strategies to overcome the problem of holding onto negative thinking, one of which is a perspective change. You need a new perspective when emotions weigh heavily on you. If you’re feeling negative, don’t start with your thoughts—just pay attention to something that makes you feel low. If you’re feeling down, trace it back to the thought that’s feeding that feeling. Remember, our thoughts feed our feelings.

One of the things we must do is make sure we are speaking up. You can walk into a conversation feeling good and walk out feeling down without even knowing what happened. That can happen because you didn’t speak up. Even if the people around you don’t accept it or their perspectives don’t change, your voice can help you maintain the right perspective. You might say, «This is just how I see it. I’m not trying to claim that I’m better than you; I just believe there’s a positive angle to this.» If you find yourself on the dark side of your thoughts, aim to shift to a more positive side as quickly as possible.

So, how do you find something positive in every bad situation? Let’s consider this: the situation that caused you to think negatively and ultimately feel negatively was indeed worth the feeling it invoked. It represented the right thought and the right feeling for that situation, which may have been wrongful, petty, unfair, illegal, or even a betrayal. Feeling hurt by that is perfectly valid. The reason you need a perspective change is that if you only view that situation negatively, you will feel that way about it for the rest of your life, even though it’s already over. You must introduce a positive thought to that situation. This doesn’t nullify the fact that what happened was genuinely wrong and hurtful, it simply adds a layer; you can acknowledge, «Yes, they wronged me, and that was truly unfair, but I got closer to God because of it.» You might say, «I started going to church afterward; I began worshiping God and having my quiet time again.» If that had not happened, I wouldn’t be able to point to that experience as something that ultimately drew me back into the arms of the Lord.