I lay in bed this morning thinking about what I wanted to share with you that would impact your day for the good. Which transitioned into, ‘why the good’? Which led to, ‘I don’t want them to just have good, I want them to have change.’ Which still left me stumped. Until I realized that sometimes for us to want a difference in our lives, we must see a difference in others and desire it. I don’t mean like a jealous desire. This isn’t the kind of change that we wish we because we see greener grass, better job, better family, etc.
Not all of those things offer something better. At least not in terms of living. What we should desire, that others might reflect in their lives, is peace filled living. There is no selfish drive in that concept. There is no connection to lifestyle at least not in a material way.
For me transformation of my thoughts, my behaviors and responses came twofold. One was spiritual, which I will always declare has the ability to impact permanent change. The other was getting to the place where I could confront the real me, admit I had some serious faults as a human being and address them with honesty. The spiritual change was easy. I didn’t have much work to do, I simply had to believe and allow change to take place. The other was and is much more challenging.
I have spent the last fifteen years hearing my self-talk. All of us do this kind of internal or external talk. Not all of us are aware of what we are saying. Example: you and your significant other have an argument. You head one way they head the other. As you sit alone with yourself you start to believe that you deserve better in a relationship. All of your other friends are happily married, why not you. These thoughts are self-talk. Commonly, they are founded on untruths.
What happens most times is we learn to justify certain events in our lives with thoughts that have been learned along our life journey. These thoughts have been ingrained in us because they are fed to us continually by outside forces. At some point, they become our inner thoughts. We are either aware or unaware of their presence.
I didn’t finish the example because I want you to try an exercise. Put yourself into that story (I’m assuming somewhere along the way you’ve had a similar moment). What trail would your thoughts go down from the spot I left off? Write the specific thought or emotion down. Work through to the end, is the situation resolved or escalated? Do you determine a next step? Now go back and work through the thoughts or emotions you had (you might have to walk away for a minute). The goal is to discover if your thoughts are rational or fed by personal fears and insecurities.
If this was a real-life example, I would encourage you to talk with someone on the outside of the relationship. Someone who would be unbiased and brutally honest with you. Obviously, this is just a first step in recognizing self-talk. There is much that goes into changing unhealthy thought patterns. That is why I said that having faith was much easier than actually examining myself constantly for the last fifteen years.
As I faced this similar challenge in my life what I learned is that mine and my husband’s arguments left me feeling disrespected, unheard, unvalued. Which led to feeling unloved. What really was happening was we are both so head strong and felt we were right in our stance that we could not ever hear each other correctly. It went something like this: He says – “You always think you’re right, it always has to be your way,” I say – “You’re acting like a child, just stop for a second and hear what I’m really saying,” He says – “yep, let’s do it your way.” This is back and forth for however long we have the strength. Did you discover what we were arguing over? Of course not because the discussion turned to an argument and the topic was lost in emotion and individual insecurities.
When you learn to recognize the way you talk to yourself, when you learn to alter it towards healthier thoughts, these arguments have less impact. Why? Because you notice right from the beginning your insecure self-talk coming out and have the ability to change it. The argument then often swings back to the topic, or sometimes it has no realistic value and you’re at peace walking away without winning.
I realize that I used a relationship here to discuss transformation of thoughts and that means two people have bearing on the outcome. I want to leave you pondering this thought, if you learn to argue more fairly, do you think it would impact how your partner does? Wait, maybe this is a better question, if your partner learns to argue more fairly, do you think it will change your response?
-blessings
Monica Swank 