Improve your thinking, and enhance your peace, by “changing the tape” …

Ruminating on an irrational thought or thoughts is a leading (if not the leading) cause of failures — relational or otherwise — in any human life.

That’s because there’s a truth about human behavior underlying all of our thinking, and it’s this: Our thoughts create our emotions, and the combination of our thoughts and emotions create our behavior.

So, an irrational thought enters your mind, and instead of challenging it you take it up and ruminate on it — playing it over and over again in your mind — the only emotions you can experience are parallel to the irrational thinking, and that irrational thinking, with its corresponding emotions, will generate your behavior.

If you want to improve your thinking, and thereby enhance your peace, you have to learn to “change the tape” of what you’re saying to yourself. I’m NOT talking about the deceptive practice so many “positive thinking” gurus advocate of telling yourself every is “GREAT!” when it really isn’t; what I AM talking about is learning to challenge your thinking so that you can purposely redirect your mind to rational thoughts rather than irrational ones.

Learning how to “change the tape” can dramatically change your life!

That’s because not paying attention to your self-talk, and just playing the old irrational thoughts in your mind, can easily and quickly send your life into a downward spiral. In the first chapter of her book, Get Out of Your Head, author Jennie Allen shares a vulnearble and honest moment from her own life about how destructive irrational thoughts can be when left unchallenged:

“Take every thought captive.” They say authors write books for two reasons: either the author is an expert on the subject, or the subject makes the author desperate enough to spend years finding the answers. The latter most definitely describes me. This morning I woke up intending to write to you. But first, I thought, I need to spend time with God. So what did I do? I picked up my phone. I noticed an email about something I was working on, in which the sender was “constructively” critical of my work.

Just as I decided to set my phone down, something else stole my attention … and the next thing I knew, I was on Instagram, noticing others’ wins and glories contrasted with my work in process that seemed to not be measuring up. In minutes with my phone, I decided that I was an inadequate writer, I was spending my life chasing things that mean nothing because I am nothing, I have nothing to say. I was spiraling fast into discouragement. Then my husband, Zac, came in happy, having just met with God, and I snapped at him.

My spiral began to spin faster and more chaotically. In less than an hour, I had diminished myself, criticized all my work, decided to quit ministry, ignored God, and pushed away my greatest advocate and friend.

Wow. Brilliant, Jennie. And that was only this morning? And now you want to try to help me with my chaotic thoughts?

All of us have had similar experiences when a runaway irrational thought wreaked havoc on our emotions and behaviors. All because we “let the tape play” — we ruminated on an irrational thought or thoughts that then produced corresponding emotions, and pairing those emotions with the thoughts, poor behavior resulted.

Before we can “change the tape,” we need to learn to become more aware of what we’re saying to ourselves. We literally have tens of thousands of thoughts every day, and research says about 95 percent of those thoughts are more unconscious than conscious and more irrational than rational. The more irrational thinking runs unabated in our lives, the more problems they create.

Key is to become more aware of what you’re saying to yourself, then change the tape! Don’t lie to yourself, instead learn to challenge your thinking so you can redirect it to the truth. Even the truth may not be easy to take in that moment, but you can deal with whatever the truth is if you change the tape from chaotic thinking to rational thinking.

My best recommendation for learning how to “change the tape” is to encourage you to connect with a competent Christian counselor skilled in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. An experienced counselor can help you better understand the significance of your thought life, and teach you effective techniques for challenging your thoughts so you can learn how to “change the tape” and improve your thought life, which can then yield a more consistent experience of peace.

Scotty