When you read the title of this column, you start thinking: what is this all about? Without anybody telling you to, and without any reason whatsoever. We read and then we think about it. Lots and lots of thoughts. In fact, without reading, our minds swirl around thoughts all the time. All kinds! It’s something all humans automatically do, with or without cues or prompts. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, personal, work-related, relational, educational, mundane, etcetera --all kinds! Author Sandy Loder wrote: “around 60,000 thoughts pass through our minds every single day!”
The bad news is, around 75% of those thoughts (so 45,000) are negative and 95% are repetitive. Now that’s a lot of bad thoughts which can significantly impact our mental health, happiness, and overall quality of life. I don’t think we can change the number of thoughts we have daily, but we certainly can try making them more positive. I think our thoughts come to our mind because we just allow them to, but we can certainly try to choose them if we really try. “The Sound of Music” suggested that “when we simply remember our favorite things, then we won't feel so bad”.
Worse, the majority (3/4) of our daily thoughts that are negative are mostly triggered by ourselves and our own choices. Humans tend to be preoccupied with past mistakes rather than successes and fret about them in great detail, recalling bits of information, thinking “how could I have done/decided on that.” We see the world around us, especially other people, and get envious of other people’s good fortune. We’re happy with all the good things, too --what we get and what is happening to us, as well as to those around us, family and friends. But the bad and unhappy things, and thoughts, seem to get the greater portion of our daily existence.
The good news is that we have the ability to choose what we think! Of course, thoughts usually just randomly crop up our minds without wishing them to, but we can also drop them if we wish. The reason bad thoughts keep staying in our minds is because we allow them to. There are about 60,000 of them daily, we can at least try to make more of them positive, and thus beneficial, constructive, and productive. Simply think more good thoughts than bad thoughts. We have to make the choice and initiative!
There’s a better and easier way --surrender our minds to God. If we fill our mind with the knowledge of God, then all of our thoughts will be compared to or contrasted with what is right, which is who God is. The Bible tells us that we can “destroy speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we can take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Oftentimes, our days are affected by how we behave, but our behavior is induced by how we think. No one knows and certainly no one can dictate what and how we think. But God knows and God can guide us, if and only if we “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”