Think It Chapter 3: How to Take Mental Inventory

Why Your Thoughts Matter: How to Recognize What Your Thinking and Change Negative Thoughts into Positive Beliefs

*This is chapter 3 of my book Think IT, become a paid subscriber to gain access to all chapters from the book before it’s released. Read previous chapters here.

What Are You Thinking? How to Recognize Your Thoughts

The hardest part about changing your thoughts is knowing what they are in the first place. Most of our 60,000+ thoughts per day are subconscious, running like barely discernible white noise in the background. They stack on top of each other, crisscrossing and overlapping all day long.

Have you ever really tried to pay attention to your thoughts? It’s intense! Ever tried to sit in silence and meditate? It’s harder than it seems, right? Why? Because our minds are going a million miles a second, and most people can’t get their inner chatter to quiet down for even a few seconds at a time, let alone reach total silence. If you’ve ever suffered from insomnia, you know exactly what I’m talking about—those racing thoughts just won’t let up long enough for you to fall asleep.

Let’s peel back the various layers of our thought “onion” to examine our thoughts more closely. This will help us take inventory of what we’re thinking about throughout the day. Remember, these thoughts are constantly creating our reality. So, if there’s anything about your life that you want to change—any pattern, behavior, or belief—it’s imperative to know what those thoughts are so you can change your future outcomes.

Conscious Thought: The Outer Layer

These thoughts consist of your to-do lists, your daily activities, your current stressors, current anxieties, maybe conversations you’ve recently had, your mental reminders, and any consistent self-talk. These thoughts are the manifestation of repetitive thinking, past and current actions, and underlying beliefs.

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