Change Your Mind to Change Your Habits

Written by Branda Polk

This article is courtesy of Living with Teenagers.

Janet was frustrated. She considered herself a disorganized person. Her home was a mess. Her schedule was over booked as she committed to everything at work, church, and with her family. She saw herself as ugly because she had gained weight. She had little focus on the things she felt were most important like her relationship to God and her commitment to her family. Janet felt unloved and unfulfilled and took her frustration out on her family with anger, harsh words, and negative behaviors. Her mind raced with thoughts of inadequacy, failure, and lack of self-discipline. Her thoughts led to feelings of fear, hurt, and anger. Janet was desperately trying to hold life together as she raced around, but all she could hear in her head was "I should be able to handle this. There must be something wrong with me."

Janet is not alone in her battle to survive the crazed pace that life brings. Many people face the battle of the mind that blocks us from the positive choices we want to make. Dr. Barbara A. Brehm, professor of exercise and sports studies at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts states, "Habitual, negative thoughts often interfere with people's intentions to change their behavior." Honestly, we desire to change the negative habits in our lives, yet the negative thoughts are so loud in our minds that they influence the decisions and choices we make. Every emotion and action begins with a thought. It is impossible to "act without thinking." So, to begin making positive changes and habits in our lives we must begin with changing our minds.

Plato once said, "Thinking [is] the talking of the soul with itself." When the thoughts that play in our minds are negative these are known as cognitive distortions. Much like a fun house mirror that distorts a reflection into unrealistic proportions, skewed thinking distorts the way we view our lives. Cognitive distortions are the self-defeating, negative, irrational thoughts, and beliefs that lead to undue stress and unrealistic views of one's life. This unhealthy pattern of thinking often produces many negative emotions, like frustration, guilt, anxiety, anger, and fear. Below is a list of 10 common cognitive distortions from the Mental Health Today Web site:

1. All-Or-Nothing Thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
2. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. Mental Filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.
4. Disqualifying the Positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or another. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
5. Jumping to Conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. 
6. Magnification (catastrophizing) or Minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement) or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick"
7. Emotional Reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."
8. Should Statements: You try to motivate yourself with "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts," as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct "should" statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
9. Labeling and Mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: "He's a loser." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
10. Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative, external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

God designed the mind for memory, to control the body's subconscious physical functions, to think, reason, discern, learn, and grow. Changing your mind from negative thought patterns to positive thoughts that lead to positive habits is called cognitive restructuring. The Bible offers insight into the way God designed our minds and how He can transform our thinking, enabling us to make positive improvements in our habits and choices. 

• Take every thought captive. Second Corinthians 10:4-5, "We demolish arguments and every high-minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." To overcome the continuous pattern of negative thinking Janet began to listen to her thoughts and realized they did not match up with the truth of God's Word. 
• Release condemning thoughts. Romans 8:1, "Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus." Thoughts that belittle are destructive and compound the negative conclusions we draw. Avoid condemnation by admitting mistakes and errors that are common in life. Ask for forgiveness when necessary from God, others, and yourself.
• Realize you are powerless to change on your own but you can change through Christ's power working in you. Philippians 4:13, "I am able to do all things through Him who strengthens me." Janet admitted she could not make the necessary changes on her own. Through prayer and counseling with her pastor she learned that only God could change her mind, attitude, and negative habits.
• Renew your mind. "Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:2a). Janet knew that her negative thought patterns had developed over the course of her life. She began to transform her mind by learning and meditating on the truth of God's Word. She discovered her thoughts were influenced by the things she read, watched on TV, and heard on the radio. Her mental renewal began by choosing to spend time in prayer and Bible reading one morning at a time. She canceled her subscriptions to the magazines that brought unrealistic lifestyle images into her home and replaced much of her TV time with exercise and time with her family. Janet allowed God to enter her thoughts and renew her mind.
• Think on these things. Philippines 4:8, "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable—if there is any moral excellence and if there is any praise—dwell on these things." Janet would test her thoughts against God's Word. If the thought didn't match the criteria in Philippines 4:8 she learned to release it as unworthy of her mental energy. 

Janet began to see major improvements in her attitude, thoughts, and choices. She allowed God to transform her thinking and set her priorities. Janet's life was far from perfect and the negative thoughts still came to mind, but she now had a strategy in place to evaluate each one before it took root in her thinking. Janet now trusts God for the constant renewal of her mind and everyone is noticing the difference. 

Branda Polk, B.S. Exercise Science, is a certified personal trainer, wellness coach, conference speaker and health writer in Lebanon, Tennessee. Sign up for Branda's newsletter, Wellness Connection, to receive encouragement and coaching in the areas of nutrition, exercise, and stress relief. Follow Branda on Twitter.