The theme of choosing our thoughts and choosing our future is a timeless leadership principle that echoes through the ages. Marcus Aurelius, the second century philosopher and Roman emperor who wrote the classicMeditations, said simply, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” In the 16th century, William Shakespeare observed, “There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” In his 19th century Journals, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day.” In 1871 Charles Darwin wrote, “The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.” Core truths are regularly rediscovered and restated for their time. At the dawn of the 20th century, William James, the American philosopher and “father of modern psychology” declared, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”
If we continue to think like we’ve always thought, we’ll continue to get what we’ve always got. Our daily thought choices translate into our daily actions. Our actions accumulate into our habits. Our habits form our character. Our character attracts our circumstances. Our circumstances determine our future…Taking responsibility for our choices starts with choosing our thoughts.
Train your brain to choose the thoughts it holds and lets go of; like everything else, behaviours are learned from observation, focus in training and learning, and from choices we make – and then it becomes a new habit, our norm, our ‘way of doing’ or ‘way of being’. We are choosing to learn a new way of being and believing when we undertake training and education on a specific topic – that was a thought, an idea, that we chose to carry through and take further into action! So you can do it. You can choose the thoughts to keep and those to dismiss and let go of. Start here and now, today, and keep practising!
When we are Mindful (paying attention and aware in our present moment), we empower ourselves to Notice, Observe, Evaluate, and Choose. Choosing thoughts that serve our goals to have a good life is how we shift ourselves out of the place where things happen to us, and into a space where things happen for us. In this moment of self awareness, we can make the choice to detach from our thinking if it does not serve us. We can observe a thought as it comes in, and watch it as it leaves the rooms of our mind. We can redirect our thoughts to ones that are more useful. We can reframe what we are thinking so that we can see it in another way. We can choose to find a thought of possibility and/or gratitude to shift our minds away from worry and negative thinking.
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