Why Your Thoughts Are Far More Powerful Than You Realise

“When you control your thoughts and emotions, you contorl everything.” — Marshall Sylver

How are you feeling these days? I mean, in terms of your mood? How about today? Are you feeling happy? Content? Uplifted and looking forward to the future?

Or are you depressed, anxious, frustrated, and worrying about what misery the universe will throw at you next?

Whatever you’re feeling, it’s a direct result of your thoughts. When you’re feeling good and inspired, it’s because your thoughts are predominantly positive.

Likewise, if you’re feeling down, your thoughts are on what’s not working in your life, what’s missing, what might go wrong or has gone wrong.

I realise that sometimes we deal with some pretty awful miseries. The death of a loved one, loss of a job, financial stress, health issues and so much more. So please hear me when I say I’m not minimising the challenges you’re facing and the impact they have on your life.

Apart from dealing with significant tragedies…I’m talking about the generalities of life and the struggles we face. The thoughts you have about those struggles will make a huge difference in how you respond to them.

As a hypnotist, I have a good understanding of how the subconscious works. Summed up, it’s like a bank vault of all the beliefs you’ve formed throughout your life. Beliefs that have come from what you’ve been told, what you’ve experienced, and the conclusions you’ve drawn from all of it.

Those beliefs aren’t usually conscious; they’re just there, quietly running in the background like your operating system. They throw out thoughts randomly, tens of thousands of them every day. Thoughts are relentless; they’re responsible for what goes on in your dreams, too. Your dreams are the way your brain “thinks” while you sleep.

So how do your thoughts affect your feelings?

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Your brain responds to your thoughts by sending out neurotransmitters, chemical messengers that deliver a message to every single cell in your body in a nanosecond. The whole process happens instantaneously; our bodies and brains are such miracles!

First, there’s a belief — let’s say, for example, something happens and you have a sudden belief that you’re in danger. Your thoughts will be about “Oh, no! Something bad might happen to me!” (even if they’re not terribly clear and specific). And your brain responds to those thoughts by sending “fight or flight” messages throughout your body so the cells can do their various tasks to help you, well, fight or flee!

Your heart will beat faster and you’ll breathe more rapidly to increase oxygen supply to your muscles. You can’t fight or run without enough muscle power to make either one possible. Your senses will be heightened to help keep you safe. Your digestive system is put “on hold” because you need your blood and energy elsewhere.

Yep, it’s that fight or flight thing again.

And instantly, when the threat has passed and you have an awareness that you’re safe, all of your body processes settle back to normal immediately.

This entire (extremely over-simplified) process can happen in an instant, start to finish.

Imagine, for example, you’re sitting alone at home one night. You’re reading. The house is dark and silent, apart from the light where you’re curled up in an armchair with your book. Let’s make it a suspenseful, spooky, scary book so although you’re enjoying your reading experience, you’re already primed and ready for some sort of page-turning “GOTCHA!” moment.

Suddenly, you hear a loud thud or a crash from somewhere inside your home. In virtually the same instant as the sound, you can feel adrenalin flood through your arms and legs. Your heart leaps into action, pounding hard to send more oxygen to your cells. You’re frightened and wonder if someone broke in.

And in the same instant, you realise the sound was something falling over in the next room and you relax. The adrenalin rush stops, your heart returns to its normal rhythm.

A split second and all of those processes happen because there was a belief that you were in danger, which produced a simultaneous thought about that. Immediately following was another belief → thought saying you were safe.

It’s amazing, really. A belief produces a thought — which is nothing more than an electromagnetic wave. It’s not a tangible, physical “something.” Yet your brain whips up chemical messengers based on that intangible “something.” It knows exactly which concoction to brew up in a millisecond and it’s doing this with every single thought we have day in, day out, 60,000–80,000 times a day — or so we’re told.

It’s like deciding you want to bake a cake and you go to the kitchen and discover there’s no milk. No flour. No eggs, butter, baking powder, sugar or anything else you might need. But miraculously, you whip up a cake.

Huh??

Nothing short of astonishing, which is a gross understatement.

So what’s all this got to do with your feelings?

Everything.

In the “dark house scary moment” scenario above, you can see clearly that a thought produces a feeling — and a physical response. Even if the thought is so fast you aren’t really aware of it on a conscious level, it’s there. In order for that scenario to have happened, there would have been an initial quick thought of danger, soon followed by another one about being safe.

If you don’t like how you’re feeling, you can change it. You just have to learn to change your thoughts.

I know, it might not be easy. But does it have to be?

If something is difficult or takes practice before it gets easier, is that a good reason not to do it?
In the words of the fictitious Al Borland on the ’90s hit TV show, Home Improvement, “I don’t think so, Tim.”

Take Back Your Power

You might be feeling like your thoughts are in control of you. I can promise you, although it feels that way it’s not the truth.

You’re the one who is in control of your thoughts. You get to be in charge of what goes through your head. I know…some thoughts wander in there without an invitation. They manage to flirt with the brain bouncer and he’s a sucker for a flirty thought. He lets them in, ignoring their terrible reputation and falling for the cute smile and twinkly eyes.

Once they’re in there, they wreak havoc. They stir up all kinds of stuff and some of it is not happy stuff.

So tell those thoughts to get out. Send them packing and replace them with thoughts that make you feel good. With each unhappy thought that wanders through, send it packing and keep filling your head with positive ones.

I understand that when you’re feeling really miserable, it can be quite a stretch to think about anything “happy.” So try this: Focus on feeling relief. If it’s too much for you to have the intention to be happy, then intend to feel relief. Keep telling yourself that you’re open to feeling relief, or that you are feeling relief… anything that gets you thinking about relief.

Try words like peace, calm, soothing.

Now…imagine how it will feel to be relieved. Close your eyes. Feel the relief. Hold that vision by holding onto that feeling…

The more you take yourself out of your miserable thoughts and replace them with thoughts of relief, joy or happiness, the quicker you will be past the misery and into feeling better.

I understand how it feels when jobs are lost or money is tight, debts are high, spirits are low. I know how it feels to have health that is poorer than you are. The idea of being happy — or even feeling relief — can seem ridiculous.

And I also understand how it feels to search for the blessings, look for the good in your life. Focus on what works, and get a little balance for the gloom and doom.

At the very least, you can intend to have relief. And you can intend that as many times a day as you want. It will make a difference — if you let it.

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As a psychic and medium, I channel messages in various ways. One of those is through automatic writing. Here is a powerful channelled message that came through from “Worry.”

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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