The results were not as expected. The disaster has hit close to home or within it. Real events present real choices about how we are going to respond. But the key word is “choice” and you have one. So, what do you do when your attitude is causing you to implode? When your response could lead you to abort your mission?
Stanford research on emotion says there are only four creators of emotion known to medicine and psychology:
- chemical or hormonal change in the body,
- damage to the brain itself,
- your thinking patterns and your internal dialog, and
- something happens to your physiology.
So, if I asked you to guess which of these four carries the greatest impact on determining your emotional state, what would you guess? Scientists estimate that 65-75% of our emotional state is determined by our thinking patterns and internal dialog.
Here’s why it’s SO important that you monitor what you meditate on: your brain wants to design your future. It’s agnostic (doesn’t care) what future you want it to build, it will build it. So if you spend your time meditating on, building an expectation of, things that are destructive to your life, your brain will build that outcome for you. It will take the inputs and create the output.
Here’s what I am saying though: what you repeatedly watch, read, listen to, who you hang out with and learn from, will absolutely influence the outcome of your life. I’m talking about what you open your heart to and allow to shape you. Your brain is going to produce the outcome from the inputs. It’s the best computer on the planet!
Don’t quit! Don’t implode. Grab a hold of your attitude today and CHOOSE. Choose to overcome. When those voices start in your head reminding you of your failures, presenting you with your destructive future, push back. Those thoughts can’t persist when you start to tell yourself what your future will be.
Paint the picture, sit or stand up straight, put a smile on your face, tell your body to get aligned with the NEW direction you are heading. Engage! Connect. Don’t shrink back. It’s time for you to decide that you are going to make good on your commitments to yourself. Paint the picture of how your life is going to look – imagine your good attitude and your positive response regardless of the situation.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Great quotes from this episode:
“Take limiting beliefs and turn them into liberating truths.” – Michael Hyatt
“You must disown hopelessness.” – John C. Maxwell
“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” – Lance Armstrong
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Now, go lead like someone you would want to follow!
Excellent, Mark! I am listening in the hotel room, so enjoying the podcast in nearly total silence. Some of your points I/we have heard many times, but now I realize we evidently didn’t “really” hear. We are currently living our lives from where we have focused our thoughts over the last minutes, hours, days, months and years…and, only we can change that focus! Great job! Great life lessons!
It’s very difficult to change decades of default. Even with purposeful intention, it’s so easy to slip back into old habits and old ways of thinking. I was encouraged to hear that so much of my emotion is determined by what I tell myself: I can control that!