The Mind Connection: How the Thoughts You Choose Affect Your Mood, Behavior, and Decisions (18 page)

Thoughts that make us dread doing something we need to do are self-defeating. I won’t allow myself to dread going to the gym. I am committed to going, so why should I make myself miserable by dreading what I already know I am going to do? I won’t allow myself to dread even the most mundane things I have to do, simply because I know that if I dread them, they will be difficult for me to do with a good attitude.

How many things do you dread doing that you know you have to do anyway? Possibly more than you realize, and by dreading them, you are negatively affecting your ability to perform, as well as your ability to enjoy what you do. When you dread doing a thing, all the natural skills you use to perform the task are hindered through wrong thinking. Our thoughts can aid us in our performance or they can hinder us, and it is up to us which one it will be.

Instead of dreading any task that is before you, why not think like this:
This is something I need to do, and I can do, and I am going to do it with a good attitude. I refuse to dread daily tasks, and I am not going to allow wrong thinking to rob me of my ability to perform strong and well.
People often announce to anyone who will listen all of the things they are dreading.

“I dread cleaning my house.” “I dread driving in traffic every morning and night as I go back and forth from my job.” “I dread going to work because I hate my job.” “I dread going to the dentist” (well, maybe you can dread that). The list is endless concerning
things we can either dread or choose to approach with a mental attitude that will actually help us.

Think
I can
thoughts, not
I can’t
thoughts.

Think
I love
thoughts, not
I hate
thoughts.

Think
I look forward to
thoughts, not
I resent
thoughts.

Now is the time to think better so you can perform better. Get the most out of your skills and talents. God has given them to you, and you can glorify Him with them by performing at optimum levels.

• Not only does the mind affect our bodies, but it also affects our performance in all areas of life.

• Success waits for all of us, but we will never have it if we think of how we may fail.

• Replace self-defeating thoughts with enabling thoughts in order to perform at your highest level.

• Performing well is not solely a matter of desire, but also discipline.

• If we give up too quickly, we often miss out on some of the best things in life.

I believe that God gives each of us abilities and corresponding energy that will help us fulfill our destiny. We aren’t born tired and listless. A new baby seems to want to do something and go someplace from the time they are born. If they were listless and had no energy, we would take them to the doctor. If you are lacking energy, you should look for the root of the problem! Many of us behave as if our get-up-and-go has got up and gone. When that happens, I believe it can be due to faulty thinking in some area of our life. We might be going through a season in which we are tired of what we are doing, but that is not an indication that we are to begin doing it in a halfhearted way. One day last week I was especially tired physically and not controlling my thoughts as well as I should have, and I thought of retirement! I took a day off and the next day I thought,
What do I think I would do with myself if I retired? I LOVE WHAT I AM DOING!
It is important not to overreact to emotions because they may fall one day and rise up the next.

We all get tired of what we are doing at times. Moms get tired of taking care of kids, cleaning house, and cooking. The office clerk gets tired of her job, and the president of the corporation gets tired of having so much responsibility all the time. Kids get
tired of going to school, and they get tired of being kids. They want to grow up and run their own lives, while adults often wish they could have fewer decisions to make and be more childlike. People in the public eye want more privacy and they long to be
normal
, and normal people want to be well known and recognized in public.

The only people who succeed in life are those who can do what they know is important with or without emotional excitement to motivate them! When your get-up-and-go has got up and gone, you need to get up and get it back. We won’t become so tired of doing what we do in life if we are more careful concerning how we think about our lives. The more appreciative I am for the life I have, the more I enjoy living it.

I recently heard of a man who had to be released from his job, and it was not due to being unskilled. He was, in fact, very qualified for the position, and he had worked at the company for several years, but he had grown unappreciative and developed an attitude of entitlement. His thinking was full of what he thought he should be getting that he wasn’t getting and how much better a job he could do if he were the department manager instead of the man who had the position. He thought he was being overlooked and mistreated, and it filled his heart with strife and bitterness. The truth was that he had a very good job with great benefits.

Hopefully, he will learn from this experience and realize that his negative thinking influenced his attitude and behavior. If he can face the truth, then he won’t have to keep making the same mistake over and over throughout his life. All too often people like this go through life blaming others for all their
disappointments, and they are never able to change because they never take responsibility for their actions. It is initially less painful to lash out at someone else than it is to do some serious soul searching and face the truth.

He may have believed that his thoughts were private and nobody knew how he felt, but the exact opposite was true. What is in our hearts does come out of our mouths and shows up in our attitudes and behaviors. He regularly insinuated that the department manager was not doing a good job. A lack of gratitude on his part resulted in loss of zeal and enthusiasm regarding his job. Instead of doing the excellent job that he once did, he was doing a mediocre job at best. These types of situations are very sad to me. I see the capabilities in people and so desperately wish they could see how their thoughts, words, attitudes, and behaviors can either release or imprison those capabilities.

I urge you to be careful about the kind of thoughts you allow to roll around in your mind when you find yourself getting a little tired of doing what you do. Stay positive and if you should come to the point, after a reasonable amount of time has passed, that you are confident that you need to make a change, then do so. But don’t blame other people and leave with a bitter, resentful attitude.

There are times in life when God lets us know a change is ahead for us by removing the desire we once had to do what we are doing. It is very wise to give these feelings the “time test” to be sure they are not mere emotions that would lead to regret if acted upon. If they pass the test and remain for a long time, it may be safe to assume that you need to prayerfully consider a change.

Clyde let his zeal fade away, and I am sure that during the building of this last house his thoughts might have been
This is my last project and I am quitting after that, so I can slack off and just do anything to get it over with
. If we don’t give our all on every project, our reward will not satisfy us. I am sure that Clyde regretted the poor job he did on the house he was now living in.

We all love having emotion to motivate us, but emotions are linked to our thoughts and tend to be abundant at some times and yet totally missing at other times. When emotion is gone and energy seems low, the best thing to do is check your thinking and make adjustments where needed, and then stir yourself up rather than waiting passively for a feeling to motivate you.

It is also wise to check your heart to be sure there is no strife in it, because strife in any area will definitely rob you of much needed energy and zest for life. A friend came to me about her husband, saying she was concerned about him because he seemed to have no motivation to do anything. She thought perhaps he was sick, but he refused to see a doctor. This situation persisted for over two years and was quite severe. He seemed depressed, lazy, apathetic, disinterested in family and life in general. The friend and I prayed together about this situation for a few weeks, and our gracious and wonderful God revealed the root of the problem. After he was confronted at his place of employment about his attitude, he realized he had let strife get into his heart during an incident that had occurred over two years prior, and his thinking had declined to the point where it was literally stealing all of his energy, motivation, and desire to do anything. He wept and repented profusely and was immediately relieved of his burden. His energy returned, and his wife is still telling me how different he is.

Fearful thoughts can also rob us of much-needed energy. Fear that something bad will happen drains us of energy, and faith in God that good things will happen motivates and energizes us.

Timothy, who was a protégé of the apostle Paul, was once actively fulfilling his role in ministry, but his zeal began to fade due to fearful thoughts. There was a great deal of persecution of Christians in his day, and he had probably let his thinking drift into all the bad things that could happen to him if he kept boldly preaching God’s Word. His energy was drained through fearful thoughts. Paul told him to “stir himself up in the Lord”
by
remembering
the gift of God (the inner fire) given to him at his ordination when Paul and the elders laid hands on him to commission him into ministry (2 Timothy 1:5–6). God had not changed His mind about the call on Timothy’s life, but Timothy needed to be encouraged concerning it. Paul also reminded Timothy that God had not given him a spirit of fear but of power, love, and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). God is not the source of fearful thoughts, but Satan is.

God gives us the ability to think soundly. Fear may come against us, but well-informed people know its source and resist it. Courageous people feel the fear and take action anyway. It was time for Timothy to cease behaving according to how he felt, and start taking action on what he knew in his heart. We will not be able to keep all fearful thoughts from presenting themselves to our mind, but we certainly don’t have to accept them and let them steal our energy, enthusiasm, and zeal.

Timothy’s fearful thoughts had to be traded for ones that would help him regain his faith. He had once been a raging fire, and now it seemed he had become cold ashes, but it wasn’t too late. All was not lost, because he had the choice to shake off the apathy he was feeling and get up and get going again. Thankfully, Timothy ultimately made decisions based on more than emotion, and he did fulfill the call on his life.

All negative thinking, or any thoughts that might be termed ungodly, steal our energy. Ungodly thoughts would be defined as anything that God’s Word teaches us not to do. Things such as angry and vengeful thoughts, as well as bitter and resentful thoughts toward others, would be counterproductive to an energetic life. Jealousy and envy rot the bones, according to Scripture, so
they would not help us (see Proverbs 14:30). Greedy and discontented thoughts are not beneficial and should be replaced with thoughts of thanksgiving. Anytime we think bad thoughts, they usually turn into bad words that are spoken by us, and that in turn becomes a bad mood that drains energy. I hope you are beginning to connect the dots, so to speak, and that you are realizing that the root of most problems that people encounter emotionally is directly linked to thoughts they have permitted to fester in their minds.

We can immediately increase our energy level by choosing energy-creating thoughts and meditating on them. It excites me to realize that I may be able to do something about improving my energy level. Admittedly, all loss of energy is not the result of wrong thinking, but even if disease is the source, good thoughts can’t do anything but help us.

Some of the most energy-draining types of thoughts are the ones about past mistakes, failure, and sins that produce guilt and condemnation. The devil loves to fill our minds with thoughts of past failures that we cannot do anything about. God, however, offers us complete forgiveness and mercy, as well as a fresh start daily. We choose which way we think. We can think about the past or the future. We can think about what we have lost or the opportunities in front of us. We can think about our sins, or we can think about the goodness and grace of God manifested by sending Jesus to pay for our sins and remove them as far as the East is from the West (see Psalm 103:12).

Guilt is our human effort offered as payment for our sins, but they have already been paid for by the death, bloodshed, and suffering of Jesus. His sacrifice is good once and for all (see Hebrews
9:28, 10:10). Think about the power and finality of that statement! If Jesus has done it once and for all, then it never needs to be done again. There is nothing we can add to what Jesus has done. We can only humbly and gratefully accept the complete forgiveness He offers and refuse the guilt.

People who love God and want to please Him often suffer terribly with guilty thoughts and feelings over every tiny thing they do wrong, or even think they might have done wrong. I was one of those people, but learning to line my thinking up with God’s Word has set me free. When I sin, I am quick to repent, I receive forgiveness, and when guilt comes, I simply think or sometimes say, “I am forgiven completely and there is no guilt or condemnation for those in Christ” (see Romans 8:1). Remember, the mind is the battlefield, and there is no hope of victory and enjoyment of life unless we are willing to learn how to control and properly manage our thoughts and bring them into obedience to Jesus Christ (see 2 Corinthians 10:5).

Guilt steals energy possibly more than any other thing simply because we are not designed by God to continually feel bad about ourselves. God loves us and wants us to keep our hearts light and free. Any thoughts that produce darkness should immediately be resisted in Jesus’ name and replaced with ones that God approves of.