Our thoughts are something that we have to be reminded of often. Because of the importance of our thoughts, we must learn how to have right ones, and then constantly put into practice what we learn. Our thoughts can bring us to freedom, or they can keep us stuck where we are at. They can make us have a good day, or they can help us have a bad day. They can tell us how to feel and what to do. But we can train our brains to help us along in life instead of being the cause of our misery. Everything that we do starts with a thought. And if we have wrong thoughts, then we will not do what will help us to make a life of peace and joy.

If there is to be any kind of change in our lives we have to first change our thoughts about the change. For example, say you have a fear of rejection. You often think thoughts like, “Nobody will like me for who I am, that job won’t hire me, I might as well not even try because it won’t be good enough.” Change those thoughts to, “It is not my fault if someone does not like me, I am who I am and I love myself, I will try my best at it and give it my all and if it is not successful then it was not meant to be, I will not be or do everything right and that is okay.” When we think good thoughts we gain confidence to be able to face fears.

It was life changing when I learned that I could choose what I thought about. I didn’t know that I could choose the thoughts that I thought. I thought that I could not help what went on in my mind. Once I learned that I could stop bad thoughts and replace them with good ones I was determined to get those bad, negative thoughts out of my head. Once I learned that I was contributing to my misery and unhappiness, I was determined to stop hurting myself and to start helping myself. It takes constant work and patience with yourself, but it is totally possible.

I had a terrible mindset full of negative thoughts about myself, life, and everything else. The first thing that I had to tackle was the thoughts about myself. Because until I thought better of myself, and believed that I could do whatever I needed to do, nothing else could change in me. Until I approved of myself, I would always change my actions and behaviors to suite those around me, and I could not be true to and happy with myself. I had years of bad thoughts that I had cover up with the right and good ones and it was going to take a lot longer than I thought it would. Matter of fact, I still to this day, have to stop a bad thought and replace it with the right one. It is a life long process and a never ending battle if we are going to keep bad thoughts from consuming our mind.

When we are being attacked in our mind by the enemy we have to use God’s word, the truth, to cover up the lies that he is trying to put in our mind. All of the negative thoughts and lies that come to our mind are from the enemy. He wants nothing more than to make us not believe in ourselves, think that we will never be able to do or have something, that we are worthless and of no value. He does not want us to have any type of victory in our lives. And he surly does not want us to be happy, uplifting, peaceful people that spread joy and peace to others. He knows that if he can put wrong thoughts in our head and get us to think those thoughts over and over that we will begin to believe them and take them as the truth, even though it is not true. I believe that any thought that has “I can’t,” “I won’t,” “I’ll never,” “I’m only,” all come from the enemy. If he can get us to believe that we can’t do something then we will never even try to do it. If he can get us to think,we won’t be worth anything then we will not live up to our potential and have the best life that we can have. If he can get us to believe we’ll never be able to move up in the company then we will not do our best at our job to have the opportunity to advance in the company. If he can get us to believe that we are only a wife or husband, a dishwasher, an addict, a screw up, a failure, or a lost cause, then we will never be happy with who we are and will not become more, or better. The enemy knows exactly where to attack us in order to keep us from having the peace, joy, love, contentment, satisfaction, and wholeness of life. So it is absolutely vital to our well being that we learn how this all works and how we can fight, and win, the battles for our best life, starting with our thoughts.

I am going to take a few days to try to go more into detail about how our thoughts control our lives and ways that we can fight the battle to win the war on our thoughts, defeating the enemy in every attack. Because I have witnessed for myself how life can change by changing our thoughts, I want to share with you the important things that helped me along the way, in hopes that it will help you in your battle to your best life. Nothing is going to change over night, it is going to take time, and take on purpose actions on your part, but I promise you that if you stick to it and do not give up, you will win the battle as well. Tomorrow I will talk more about how the mind works and controls every other thing about us. We will get into the ways to battle the enemies attacks on our mind the next couple of entries. I want to give you small doses at a time so that you can ponder the words that I speak to you and can embed them into your mind in preparation for your battle. I believe that when we take in important information,  such as this, we are able to remember it, keep it in the front of our minds, and put what we have learned into practice better when we do not over load ourselves all at once with the information. And for that purpose I want to take it slow and possibly repeat some of the most important information so that it gets down into your soul, embedded in your mind.