The phrase, Your Thoughts Matter and You Can Choose Your Thoughts, is core to the You Can Choose framework. We learned our thoughts matter after spending much of our lives thinking without realizing their power.
Little did we know that each judgment, worry, and self-criticism works to slow us down and restrict us. Similarly, each time we appreciate, honor and celebrate, we move closer to our goals and desires.
We think all the time. We offer up a nearly nonstop stream of ideas, concepts, and judgments. Our mind goes almost full time, and it’s looking for things to do. If we are not fully engaged with what is in front of us, it goes hunting in the past or the future for material.
How do we know our thought matter? We know from first-hand experience. Both of us have dramatically changed how we think, and we’ve had corresponding changes in much of our lives. The people we meet and experiences we have now are so very different than those from just a few years ago.
We also know because of all the studies. Since our initial transformation, we’ve begun reading and learning about all the many and varied experiments in the field of metaphysics and consciousness.
The amount of information out there is overwhelming, convincing, yet conflicts with much of what we regard as established truths.
For example, several studies show the children of parents who’ve experienced trauma, are predisposed to fear. As their parents live through a terrible experience and think about it, somehow it is captured and passed on. We were taught in school that everything we get from our parents is passed down genetically through DNA or based on how we were raised. These new studies around epigenetic and family constellations show there is much more involved, and what the parents experience is passed down – sometimes through many generations. Here is a study on mice who passed on their fear of a specific smell to two generations of their offspring. It’s amazing. https://www.nature.com/news/fearful-memories-haunt-mouse-descendants-1.14272
Another powerful example of the power of our thoughts is a study of a dog that knows when its owner is coming home. Those of us who are dog owners can appreciate the intuition of our pets and are not surprised to learn there might be deeper connections. The study, conducted in the UK, tried all sorts of tricks to disguise when and how the owner was coming home. Each time the owner started towards home, the dog sat at the window in anticipation. Here’s a link showing how almost instantaneously the dog knew when its owner was on their way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA5wAm2c01w
These are just a few examples. When you start getting into the science, the data is hard to ignore.
Our thoughts really do matter. Beth and I have just begun to learn how to use them. It takes intention and focus. Think about the efforts you put into learning a language, how to walk, or how to do your job. Learning to use your thoughts intentionally is worth the effort when you see the results.
If you are not getting everything you want out of life, is now the right time to learn more about the power of your thoughts?
