Choosing a new way of thinking is like riding a bike - or is it?

    Stuck  in a rabbit hole of negative self-thinking? Ready to start re-training your brain with more positive and productive thoughts? After years of negative self-thinking paired with feelings you chose to link your thought to, you now have to break those thought habits!  Sound easy you say?  It's like riding a bike - or is it? It takes practice and patience to learn a new "thinking" skill in order to make it your new "familiar". Practice does make perfect.

 Learning to think differently isn’t like riding a bike - do you know where that phrase "it's like riding a bike" came from? Most of us learned at a very young age (starting with training wheels) to ride. You sit on a bike, use your feet to peddle and the handle bars to steer. Then you learned to balance. Because you learned so young, even if you haven’t ridden a bike for some time, if you get onto a bike, you can easily pick up and go….you don’t even need to think about it. Thinking is the same way. If you have thought a certain way “I am not good enough” for some time, that’s what your brain has learned to think. And that thought easily comes out of your mouth often without thinking about it. It is your default way of thinking about yourself.  Now its time to retrain your brain. You need to learn how to "re"-think, you need to practice your new thought. It takes practice and patience. 

The first question is to ask yourself how do you want to think about yourself? How would that new feeling make you feel? Each time the old way of thinking, the negative self-talk or chatter starts up, push that delete button and switch it out with your new way of thinking. You will need to do this switch out over and over but soon, over time, you have created your new thought habit.

Remember, your thoughts are optional! How you feel about your thought is also optional. It takes practice and patience to learn a new "thinking" skill in order to make it your new "familiar".

 Practice does make perfect.