The Mind Connection: How the Thoughts You Choose Affect Your Mood, Behavior, and Decisions (17 page)

When you are irritated or frustrated, where do you experience those feelings in your body? When you are late for an appointment, does your stomach start to hurt or feel upset? Do your muscles become tense when you have to wait in a long line and nobody is in a rush but you? When you hear that someone you trusted has told your secret, do you experience shortness of breath as you become more and more anxious? What happens in your body when you become anxious or angry? Have you ever really paid attention to how you feel physically when you are experiencing negative thoughts and emotions? If not, it could be an educational process in which you might learn a lot. What happens to your heart rate? Do you get pain in your head or neck, or do you begin to sweat?

I have observed that when I have something on my mind that is pressuring me, I don’t sleep as well as I normally do and then I feel tired the next day. I really don’t like it when someone gives me a problem at night and there is no way for me to solve it until the next day. I like to deal with troubling issues right away and get them off my mind. The apostle Paul tells us not to let the sun set on our anger (see Ephesians 4:26), and I think it best not to let it set on our worries either.

Pay attention to how memories affect you. If I let my mind drift back to specific instances when my father was abusing me or
beating my mother, or yelling in anger, or the fear I experienced constantly throughout my childhood, my body responds with tightness and I clench my teeth. I don’t allow myself to do that very often, but there are occasions when I find my mind has gone to a wrong memory, and I have to retrieve it quickly before it traps me in a painful place that is unhealthy. Good memories have the opposite effect. They produce peace and relaxation, both of which cooperate with the healing properties God has placed in our bodies.

If I allow my thoughts today to be on what went wrong yesterday or mistakes I may have made, it will only zap my strength for today. No wonder the apostle Paul said that one of his greatest aspirations was to forget what was behind him and to press toward the future (see Philippians 3:12–14). Perhaps he knew two thousand years ago what we are finding out today. Over and over, God’s Word instructs us to remember the good things that God has done for us. I suspect that God also knew what the scientist and chemists are just discovering about how thoughts affect the rest of our lives. God sure is smart, and it is a shame that more people don’t listen to Him and believe what He says! I always chuckle when a “scientific discovery” reveals something God revealed in His Word centuries ago.

Let’s look at a few examples of this in God’s Word:

God told the Israelites to
remember
that they were once slaves in Egypt, and how He redeemed and delivered them (see Deuteronomy 24:18). I am sure when they were delivered, it was an extremely joyous occasion, and remembering it often would surely help them in many ways.

Esther put her life on the line when she went before King Ahasuerus without being summoned to plead for the lives of the Israelites whom Haman secretly planned to destroy. When her
plan worked and they were all saved, the people took it upon themselves to keep a two-day feast every year to
remember
what God had done for them (see Esther 9:27–29).

When David was dealing with depression, he purposely
remembered
a time when he led the people with shouting and praise (see Psalm 42:4–5). I am sure that David was applying the principle I am suggesting. He was thinking about things that made him happy to help get rid of the depression he was experiencing.

David found the key to satisfaction. He said:

There are many instances recorded in the Bible when God instructed His people to remember, recount, and recall His mighty acts and the things He had done for them. When they failed to do so, they lost their appreciation, became selfish and independent, and always went back into bondage. Remembering the good things in life is certainly helpful and keeps us on the happy path of gratitude. The simple fact is that thankful people are happy people, and happy people are often healthier than sad, discouraged, hopeless, and depressed people.

The mind-body connection is now a proven fact, and it gives us an easy and inexpensive way to help maintain good health. Anybody can think positive, good thoughts if they will choose to do so.

I love that I can improve my health by thinking better thoughts. Nobody wants to be a victim, and we certainly don’t want to be victimized by our thoughts. Learning to think purposely and aggressively, instead of passively providing an empty space for chance or the devil to fill, is the way to become the victor instead of the victim. Ask God to help you, and get started today on your way to a healthier mind and body.

• Positive, hopeful thoughts increase your energy levels.

• Confront troubling issues right away. Deal with them, refusing to let worry affect your spirit, soul, and body.

• Instead of focusing on what is wrong, set your mind on what is right—the good things God has done in your life.

• Thankful people are happy people, and happy people are healthier people.

Learning about the mind-body connection won’t necessarily cure all of our illnesses and turn us into superheroes, but we can improve our lives in many ways by learning how to think properly. Not only does the mind affect our bodies, but it also affects our performance in all areas of life. If you are going for a job interview, I am sure that you want to perform well and appear to be confident and capable. No company wants to hire anyone who has no confidence that they can do the job they are applying for. The thoughts you think prior to the interview will determine, at least in large part, how you perform during the interview.

If a person fears failure and they go to the interview doubting they will get the job and entertaining all sorts of thoughts that minimize their ability, they surely will not get the job. Here are two different ways Brian might think if he were going on a job interview:

William Shakespeare said, “All things are ready, if our minds be so.”
¹
A job is ready for Brian somewhere, but his mind must be ready to have it! Success waits for all of us, but we will never have it if we think of how we may fail.

Here are a few quotes to meditate on that I found to be helpful:

Each of the people quoted above is an athlete. They have learned that they cannot be successful in their sport if they are unable to control their thoughts. Successful performance requires successful thinking!

In order to perform successfully, an athlete must train his mind and his body. He must have the ability to stay focused under pressure and not allow fearful, self-defeating thoughts
to fill his head. If a batter in a baseball game hears the umpire yell, “Strike one!” he cannot think,
I am afraid I will strike out
. He must believe that he will succeed the next time he swings. Even if he ends up striking out, he should think,
I will get a hit the next time I am at bat
.

An overly religious individual who tends to be judgmental might say, “Joyce, you are merely teaching ‘mind control,’ and I think we just need to trust God!” Certainly I believe we must trust God, but the truth is that we can also make the choice to control our minds so our thoughts go in line with God’s will. We are partners with God in life and we can follow the guidelines He has set forth in His Word. One of those guidelines is that we learn to think as He does, so we can be and have what He desires!

We certainly cannot control all of our performance and reactions to things by thinking in certain ways. God is ultimately in control, and we succeed by leaning on and trusting in Him, and not merely through positive thinking. However, there is nothing in any kind of negative thinking that would help us in any way. Even if I were a ballplayer (which I am not), and I thought I would hit a home run but ended up striking out, at least I wouldn’t have drained my energy for the next opportunity through defeatist, energy-draining mental habits.

Surely, as Moses led the Israelites through the wilderness toward the Promised Land, he was thinking of what they could have, not what they had previously had. Before God delivered them, they were oppressed as slaves in Egypt and had been sorely mistreated.
But as they journeyed to a better place, one of the very bad habits they had was becoming discouraged during hard times and thinking about the few pitiful things they did have as slaves. Your life cannot go forward if your mind is going backward!

Look forward in your thinking. Get your mind off your failures and disappointments, because there is a victory waiting for you! Any great athlete has developed the ability to think about the next successful play he is expecting and not the unsuccessful one he just had. He may examine his less than stellar performance in order to learn from it, but he doesn’t have to wallow in the negativity of it.

You may not be an athlete, but you do want to perform well at whatever you are doing, and the principles of how the mind affects our performance in all areas of life are basically the same.

In order for me to perform at an optimum level, I have discovered that I need to work out and exercise regularly. I know some of you may cringe when I say “exercise,” but you can relax, because I am not going to try to convince you to exercise. I do think it is beneficial for everyone, but in this instance I want to draw out one principle I am learning about how my mind affects my performance during my training sessions.

I have been working out regularly with a trainer for ten years, because I want to be as strong as I can for the work God has called me to do. It was difficult in the beginning to keep going, because I had never exercised and everything I did made me extremely sore (sometimes painfully sore). I am not exaggerating when I say that I believe I was sore someplace on my body for two years. Quite often people have a goal, but when they experience inconvenience, discomfort, or sacrifice, they go backward instead of continuing to go forward. I had to learn to believe that I could do the exercises I was being given, and it amazed me to learn how quickly our bodies will adapt to doing new things that we have never done before. I am easily doing exercises now that a few years ago made me laugh in disbelief when my trainer first described them to me. I have learned not to think and say, “I can’t do that,” but to replace that self-defeating thought with an enabling one. Now I think,
I can learn to do that
. My performance is enhanced by how I think!

One of the things my trainer told me over and over was to focus my mind on the muscle I was working on. He said that I would actually get more benefit from it if I did. I had difficulty learning to do this, because my mind is often on something else. I do most things fast and exercise was no different, but I was continually told that I needed to slow down and focus if I wanted to get full value out of my efforts. I have finally gotten much better at that part, but am still working on focusing on the muscle I am working on. No matter what we are doing, focus is required in order to have optimum performance. We have to control our thoughts, because thoughts affect performance. When we discipline ourselves to focus on what we are doing, we perform with a greater
degree of accuracy and excellence. Focus actually helps release the strength that we have, and focus is simply directing your thoughts to what you are currently doing.

Performing well is not merely a matter of desire, but it also requires discipline. There is no shortage of people who start things. They are zealous when they begin but lack the discipline to keep at it until they get the desired result. They have big ideas, but not enough disciplined focus to follow through. Dave and I know a man who owns and operates a gym. People pay a monthly or yearly fee to join and they can work out as often as they want to. Most of the people are on an autopay plan. Their fee is taken directly from their bank account or placed on their credit card. He told me that out of all the people who sign up and pay regularly, only 40 percent of them show up to exercise.

One might wonder why they keep paying the fee if they are not going to go to the gym. I think it is because it makes them feel better to think they may go, or to plan to go, even if they never actually do it.
Tomorrow
may be one of the most dangerous words in the English language. We comfort ourselves in our lack of discipline by promising to do it tomorrow! Today we think we will go tomorrow, but when tomorrow comes, we dread going and put it off one more day.

One of the reasons why we often don’t follow through and complete what we start is because we find it to be more difficult than we had imagined it would be. The more you do anything, the easier it will become. God has given us an amazing ability to adapt to new things. For example: A new employee who is hired for the road crew may find the travel very tiring and difficult in the beginning, but after a while, it becomes part of their normal routine, and if they stay home too long, they are anxious to get back on the road. If you are in the midst of doing something that
is fairly new for you and finding it difficult, I urge you to give it time before you give up. If we give up too quickly, we often miss out on some of the best things in life.