HOW THOUGHTS SHAPE OUR LIFE

Thoughts steer our attention

It may be hard to believe, but our brain is not a perfect receiver and does not remember every single detail (I know many men may think their wives have brains that remember every single occasion, especially when they have messed up… but no). Whilst our brain is capable of noticing and processing a vast array of information, it does have shortcuts and biases that can lead to selective attention and cognitive illusions (now the women are thinking about the men in their lives). LOL

To help us survive and navigate the chaos of life, our brain puts in ‘search filters’ to allow it to find what it’s searching for from our thoughts. So, for the reasons listed below, it’s best that we start to pay more attention to our thoughts (because of our pesky search filter).

If our mindset/thoughts keeps us thinking that we’re struggling to keep up in life, then all that we’ll notice is how well our friends are doing, and what we lack. Even the good stuff, like our little victories end up getting ignored, because we’re no longer searching for them. Let’s think of our mindset as a laser searching out only that which is the same or similar to our particular thought (like starting a diet, but thinking we probably wont be able to do it anyway as we usually don’t. We find no shortages of excuses for a sweet treat like a donut… at least a donut makes us feel happy for a while).

So our search engine/mindset/thoughts searches for ways we have failed before, and lights up our road to failure (complete with good reasons why we should fail). We then compound that by eating something wrong and spend the next few days guilting ourself that we failed again! (But was that not that the goal of our mindset in the first place?) But, if our mindset keeps us thinking how we’re continually getting better, and how we’re making better choices for our future selves, we then pick up on how much progress we’re making, find opportunities, and come across supportive people.

Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes describes two people who begin a new job. The first person thinks they’re not good enough (that they should not really have got the job and it will just be a matter of time before they are ‘found out’ and get fired). They then look for every reason to quantify this theory, so they focus on every small mistake and nit pick at everything they do, and how badly they do it, knowing that anyone else could do it better. As a result, people then notice the mistakes they make, and indeed start to nit pick at their work as that is what they are searching for. Does any of us recognize this in ourself?

The other person (with a learning mindset), is proud of getting an opportunity to use their skills and shine, they take note of their improvements, how their confidence is growing and ask more questions to discover other ways of incorporating more skills into their ever growing tool box. They strive forward, knowing anything is possible and that they can accomplish what they set out to do. Opportunity always seems to find them, as that is what they have set their ‘filter’ to.

The point that Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes is making, is that it’s our own thoughts that decide what it is that our mind ‘highlights.’

Thoughts drive our emotions

Most emotions don’t come directly from events. Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes insists that they come from the MEANING we give to the event. He sets a scenario of an event whereby someone didn’t reply to our message. Our first thought could be that, ‘they don’t respect me, every body ignores me, I don’t know why I bother’ which would trigger the emotion of anger or sadness.

Alternatively, our thought might be that, ‘I said something wrong, I always say the wrong thing, that is why I don’t have many friends’ which could trigger the emotion of anxiety or stress. Of course, we could just have a thought that, ‘oh well, they’re probably just busy.’ There’s no emotion, just calmness.

The point that Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes is driving home, is that each scenario is the very same situation, but with very different thoughts and feelings. Mindset.

Thoughts influence our actions

Our feelings are what pushes our behaviour. But it’s our thoughts that are in the drivers seat of our feelings. Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes warns that if we have the thought that we can’t do something, our emotion may react with fear or stress, which in turn initiates an action of procrastination, avoidance or quitting. The powerful ‘What IF’! (What if I try and fail, I probably wont be able to do it anyway so I should not even bother).

On the other hand, should we compromise with the thought of, ‘I’ll do one small step,’ our emotion may be one of pressure, but it’s still manageable. It initiates the action of starting, which expands to a practice and eventually blossoms into momentum. We just get a taste of what it feels like to DO, the hardest part always seems to be the first step, but looking back with regret and ‘if only’ (for NOT trying), is a heavier burden than the difficulty in taking the first step.

The philosophy teacher went one step further with a scenario of two different thought mindsets: Should we think that gym is too hard (getting up earlier and probably looking ridiculous using the machines wrong), then it’s quite likely that we’d just skip it. But if we had the thought to do ‘just 10 minutes, of something we enjoy, walking outside, trampolining, or skipping like a 10 year old with no-one else looking, then we’d end up doing more than the 10 minutes once we got started!

Thoughts become habits (our mental ‘default setting’)

What we keep telling ourself, eventually becomes our brain’s automatic pattern. Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes explains that if we keep repeating about how we’re always unlucky,’ then we inevitably start expecting failure and we stop trying to the best of our abilities (we end up believing it). Think of our thoughts as muscles. What we keep thinking about, is what we strengthen. Instead of building muscles we’re building neural pathways. Our thought will follow the path it usually takes, be it positive or negative.

Should we have a positive mindset and think that, ‘we can always figure stuff out,’ we treat every challenge as an adventure and keep trying. We build our confidence and an awesome ‘can-do’ attitude. Over time, these repeated thoughts become what seems like our ‘personality,’ but Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes is quick to point out that really, they’re just trained patterns. The moral of this story being that our mind learns what we practice, so we should only build the pathways that we would prefer to travel.

Thoughts change results over time (compounding effect)

Thoughts affect even the little things in life. These small choices (when repeated enough times) eventually become big life outcomes. Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes explains COMPOUNDING for us:

Should we have the thought of ‘I really want to do something different, but I am too old to change.’ If we were to maintain that thought and do that 100 times, the months will tick away, and there’d be no change, and we’d still be in the same place and yes even older! But we’ll still have the usual thousand and one excuses of why we made the right choice to do nothing. If however our thought was to do just one step today, and try something different to see if we like it, discover a new skill or passion (just by taking bitesize classes, watching a video and giving it a go), then by doing what we love 100 times, maybe we’d discover a new passion/skill, make real progress, with real results.

Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes points out that real POWER is not one big thought, but repeated thoughts shaping repeated actions. The loop that makes our thoughts so powerful is simple:

Thought creates Emotion creates Behaviour creates Outcome creates New Thought

Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes interprets it like this, a thought creates an emotion, that emotion influences what we do, our actions create an outcome, and the outcome then feeds back into the next thought we have about ourself and/or life.

The philosophy teacher points out that this is why our thoughts feel so powerful… it’s because they don’t just stay in our head; they shape our feelings, our choices and our results. Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes concludes that if we can change the thought (or change how we relate to it), we can change the emotion, the behaviour, and eventually the outcome, which means that we can shift the entire loop to a more healthier direction.

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sheamus Sherman Schnouzer-Shoes is a Philosophy teacher at Chuggphasterr Community College in the parish of Cabbagechester. You can discover more about hime here: https://thefrequency.ca/sheamus-sherman-schnouzer-shoes-2/

SPIRITUAL QUEST

If you wish to discover more about yourself and how life operates, please check out our Faery Wood Spiritual Quest. It’s a Spiritual Warriors handbook/Awakening Journal, complete with audio and exercises. A hard copy is also available. It walks us through our patterns, awareness, triggers, forgiveness, acceptance, intentions, purpose and many more areas of our life such as change.

Learn more here: https://thefrequency.ca/spiritual-quest/

IMPORTANT: Our mind is a magnet. When we think of blessings, we attract blessings. Likewise, when we think of problems we attract problems too. So we need to do our best to make sure to always have good thoughts and be positive.

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