Anyways, I guess all of last year, I was really battling my mind. Questioning not only my thoughts, but also why I thought those things. Where did those mindsets and ways of thinking stem from? Did something happen to me that caused me to think this way? And because I thought this way, it caused me to feel a certain way, and act a certain way, which made me who I was, who I am. All of last year, I was trying to figure out what was normal, but what was normal? To understand normality, you have to try to understand abnormality (and my 2 abnormal psychology classes really helped me, especially with self-diagnosing..ahah) Why wasn't I "happy"? Why was joy so hard to come by? There must be something in me that's not right. Then realizing that it's all in my mind and in the way I perceived my world.
So I set a goal out to try to combat my way of thinking. I caught myself being cynical, skeptical, having major trust issues, over-thinking, dwelling on the negative, beating myself over dumb things, over-regulating, monitoring my every action, being super self-aware. I felt like a scientist, but I was dissecting my own brain. It was a very internal struggle. And from the outside, I must have seemed so awkward and inhibited. But internally, I was trying to break my usual mold of thinking. It's like waking up one day and realizing that all you're life, you've been thinking one way, when it's actually the other way. It's so hard to break that pattern, and even if you break that pattern, you have to adopt a new way of thinking. Everything is trial and error. To be self-aware is to be able to emotionally put yourself out there. To be able to have the courage to get hurt because you know you will heal.
This year, after having learned so much about my mind, I'm still figuring things out. Something I learned (it's so simple, yet so hard to do): to focus on the positive. To be grateful for what you have. To not focus on suffering and pain. I think in Christianity, there's so much focus on suffering, pain, endurement. But when the focus turns into what we're losing, what we're sacrificing, we lose sight of what we have. Plus, wouldn't suffering be so much easier if you're unaware of it. From personal experience, suffering is magnified by 100 times if you're focused and conscious of it. Then it becomes this self-pity sort of thing and it's you against the world. Sooner or later, you fall into a negative way of attributing situations. Everything is taken personal, everything becomes you're fault, hope seems to fade, joy becomes distant.
I can see how people with everything can still fall into depression, while people who have absolutely nothing can still find joy. I remember what the homeless man said to me: "When you're where I'm at, you just have to laugh". He had nothing but laughter, and he held onto that. It got him through 18 years of homelessness, and it's still getting him through.
Everyday, I fill my head with positive thoughts, no matter how dumb it is. I try to mentally compliment every person that walks by, no matter how lame or cheesy, it works. You really have to train your mind to think this way, an exhaustive step by step. You have to be able to catch yourself falling into that familiar trend of wrong thinking, and combat it with the right way of thinking. With a positive scheme of thinking, comes positive perceptions, emotions, behaviors, and actions. By letting God renew your mind, you will be able to find that joy and hope that He has promised.
"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
2 Corinthians 5:10
"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."
Romans 12:2
Recommended reading: Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyers
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