Hey Wonder Woman, your most valuable Super Power resides within YOU.
It always has and it always will.
Although you’ve been wielding it all your life, you’ve probably misused it 1,000s of times or more each and every day.
What is your innate Super Power?
It’s the power of your mind.
It’s harnessing your INTENTIONAL THINKING.
Did you know we humans think more than 50-70,000 thoughts per day? That’s about 35-48 thoughts per minute.
That’s a lot of opportunity to think thoughts that can either help you or hinder your motivation to get what you want in your relationships and in your life.
Your thoughts are just sentences in your mind.
They are your own, very personal, unique narrations and interpretations of the world around you.
They are influenced and colored by all the previous thoughts and interpretations you’ve ever had.
You’ve built your ideas and beliefs on a foundation of previous thoughts you’ve probably thought many times over.
Your life circumstances are neutral until you tell a story around them.
By itself, any circumstance is neutral until you give it meaning. Until you pass judgement on it, assign a value to it or in some way interpret it positively or negatively, the circumstance just exists as an unadorned situation, fact or person.
That the existence of this particular factual, person or circumstance can be proven in a court of law defines its neutrality. There is a way to measure or document the circumstance. It can be identified by a simple precise description.
In the examples below, the neutral circumstance is written in bold type. The other half of the example reveals a thought because it contains a value or judgement that gives a particular slant to the statement:
- I am 5’3″ vs I’m short. (To my 3 year old granddaughter, I’m tall! You can measure my height to determine I am, in fact 5’3″.)
- I am married vs I have a spectacular marriage. (I can produce my marriage license to prove the fact but there is nothing I can show to prove my marriage is spectacular. It’s my thoughts about it that I interpret as spectacular.)
- My husband said, “You look great in your your red dress.” vs My husband thinks I probably look fatter in my white dress. (When I quote the specific words that someone says, that is a fact. Had it been tape recorded, it would have revealed that my husband said those exact words. However, when I interpreted his statement, my thoughts were that he thought I looked fat in my white dress, which, of course, he never said.)
Once you modify the factual part with an adjective, an adverb or some language that colors the fact, you’ve created a thought.
These myriad thoughts you have are the catalyst to a cascade of feelings.
Your thoughts create your feelings, now what?
The quality of your emotional life depends entirely upon your thinking.
To change your feelings about something or someone, you first must change your thoughts.
Even thousands of years ago, the great Greek stoic philosophers recognized the power of our thinking to create our emotions and our experience of life.
I love when the wisdom of ages captures concepts which resonate with us today.
Here’s what the great Roman stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius had to say about the power of thought:
That all is as thinking makes it so – and you control your thinking. So remove your judgements whenever you wish and then there is calm – as the sailor rounding the cape finds smooth water and the welcome of a waveless bay.
You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
Aurelius counseled the citizens of Greece that we have 100% control over our emotional lives by changing our thinking.
How to take control of your emotional life.
When you understand that it’s your thoughts that create your feelings, you can better understand and intentionally direct your emotional life.
Once you recognize that your thoughts are just sentences in your mind that you can choose to think, you claim your Super Power.
It’s always within your control to decide which sentences you will pay attention to and which you will let evaporate without fanfare. Which you will allow to hold your back or set your free.
Yes, you really can control you emotional life with your thinking alone.
This, my amazing Wonder Woman, is your awesome Super Power!
Use it wisely.
What thoughts are holding you back from having the marriage and stepfamily relationships you really want?
Do you need help sorting out your circumstances from your thoughts?
Are you ready to ready to challenge or change some of your thinking that’s hurting you?
Reach out to me right here. Let’s talk.
Check out Part 2 to gain a deeper insight into how to discover your hidden thoughts.
