Controlled By Thoughts

In my counselling sessions, when I hear most
of my clients’ list of symptoms and ailments, I
quickly tell them, “I am not a medical doctor
and do not treat disease, but healthy people
don’t have that; let’s make you healthy.”
What is it that healthy people don’t have?
Perhaps first and foremost, they don’t have
major degenerative diseases-cancer, heart
trouble, crippling arthritis, osteoporosis,
mental illness, senility, diabetes,
arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries)
hypertension and others.
I progress in my counselling by letting them
see the danger ahead and an urgent need for
a positive change.
Changing destructive lifestyle patterns means
we have to break old habits and create new
ones. Habits are behaviour patterns we put on
or take off. If our heart muscle need to be
strengthened and if jogging three times per
week will produce the result, we have a
responsibility to put on the jogging habit. If
sugar causes our nerves to be on edge, we
need to take off the sugar habit
What do you say when you talk to yourself?
Pay close attention. You may just learn
something very important. Have you ever
made comments like the ones below?
•I’m so fat and ugly.
•I know God loves me.
•I just hate myself!
•I’ve decided to change my lifestyle.
•I’m out of control.
•I’m in control of my choices.
•I deserve this soft drink.
•I think I can do it
•I’m so stressed.
•Why am I so depressed?
•I won’t give up.
•I can’t do it.
•I believe God will help me.
•I’m such a failure.
•What’s wrong with me?
•I understand what I’m doing wrong.
These statements reflect a mix of both
thoughts and feelings. And that is exactly
what the soul is- a blend of both mind and
emotion. Our brain stores information. With
our intellects, we think, reason, and choose
how to respond to that information. Our
feelings are direct responders to our thoughts.
Without thought, there would be no feeling in
the emotional sense. So to change your
feelings, you must change your thinking. “As
he thinks in his mind, so is he.” Proverbs
23:7. In essence, our most dominant thoughts
“win.”
Thankfully, God has blessed us with the ability
to experience the joy and excitement of life on
an emotional plane. Yet every positive
emotion has it’s negative twain. We would not
be able to appreciate the height of joy without
having tasted the depth of sorrow.
And so when we speak of the soul, it is both
thoughts and feelings we address.those
thoughts and feelings ultimately drive us to
action. The mind is the pilot of the soul it is
the control centre of our entire being.
All humans are designed by their creator to
respond in specific ways, no matter what their
spiritual beliefs may be. Just like the
heart,liver and kidneys are designed to perform
certain functions, the mind also has been
physiologically designed to do it’s job.
Therefore, it is very helpful to understand how
God designed this magnificent globe of grey
matter and see why it does what it does! We
can better appreciate the complexity of our
feelings and behaviours when we understand
the physiology of the human brain.
Our brain is more masterfully engineered than
any man-made computer. It has been
programmed to respond with consistency to
an endless variety of situations.
But like a computer, our brain does not place
judgement on it’s data. True or false, it just
stores it day after day, week after week, month
after month, and year after year. Ultimately,
we come to believe the strongest messages-
those messages that have played the loudest
and most frequently throughout our lives. But
what if that information is wrong? Well just
imagine what will happen if someone replaced
the data that is stored in the NASA computers
with wrong information. The result will be
disastrous. The same is true with your mind.
Those who have studied human behaviour
know that how we think drives our choices
and behaviour. Our brain functions as a
storage centre for information. Therefor there
is no permanent way to change your behaviour
without first changing your mind. That is why
diet don’t work. All the change is external.
And when the diet is over, 99 percent of people
revert back to old behaviours.
Listen to yourself when you look in the mirror
each morning. What words do you express as
your resolve to loose that excess weight? How
do you describe your body, your fitness, your
energy, your self-control? If you keep telling
yourself that you are fat and you hate
exercise, you’ll continue to believe it.
Those beliefs will sabotage your ability to
make lasting change. Like some others you’ve
probably struggle to change old habits. You
resolve to be successful this time. But how can
you be successful when you have been
programmed to fail. Experts agree that it takes
twenty-one days even to begin breaking an
old habit. It takes at least as long to form a
new one. Yet on average, people can only
stick to New year’s resolutions for seventeen
days. No wonder they fail.
Perhaps you are trying to shed that final ten,
twenty, or thirty kilogramme of body fat. Or
maybe you have struggled for years to
overcome a food addiction or an aversion to
exercise. Before you have another go at it, try
a more permanent approach. Try changing
your mind before you change your behaviour.
Helpful Steps
• You need to have a healthy relationship with
food
•Choose to refrain from some foods because
you want to improve your health or feel better.
•Know that you can have anything you want,
anytime you want it, so you don’t have to
have it all right now.
•Know when enough is enough and find other
coping mechanism in life besides food to help
you through tough times
•The easiest way to burn body fats and stay
healthy is to move, move, move! When we
engage in large muscle, sustained activity
such as walking, biking, swimming, skipping
or even dancing, we significantly increase the
amount of fat burned for fuel.
•We need to make conscious effort to get our
bodies moving. For some, that means
exercise. From my perspective, the “E” word
represents a very specific activity designed to
work the body for an intended result. It has
it’s advantages. Exercise tends to be time
efficient and, if done properly, can be very
effective.