Everything Starts With A Thought - by Dean Attwood Mindset and Performance Coach and Anxiety Expert

My last article focused on the challenges associated with creating physical change, today I am going to shift that focus slightly to the language we use, and the sheer importance of it.

 

 

Language, the language we speak to ourselves, the tone, the direction, the meaning, the truth, the lies, the hurt, the pain, the cover up, the mask, the joy, the happiness, the resolution! 

 

 

Like many people at the start of January you possibly made a few ‘New Year’s Resolutions’

How are they going? Are you still committed to them?

 

I was tempted to add some facts about January Resolutions, but I wanted you to keep reading on so I didn’t.

 

Safe to say, a lot of people lose commitment to their New Year’s Resolutions after 4 weeks….

 

If you have dropped your New Year’s Resolution, did you talk yourself out of it?

 

Over the following months, I will be writing about my passion with mindset work, the growth and changes we can all make and giving tips and tools to help, however, I feel we must take a few steps backwards before we push on and make a-new.

 

 

I hear a lot of people talk about and use the question “What’s your why?” followed by “If your why is strong enough, then you would do it and make it happen.”

 

Yes, a powerful ‘why’ is crucial but, ask yourself this; What if deep down in the dark, old trauma, learnt or even modelled hurtful self-talk and behaviour has and is continuing to evolve, adapt and even ‘hard wire’ the programme code in your brain?

All that initial motivation and energy you exhibited is slowly but surely being drained away?

Yes, outside interference and other factors may impact this, but have you truly considered the effects of your daily and constant thoughts?

 

With a physical injury, after 12 weeks the injury can become Chronic, and with it some marked changes can occur. Your nervous system has made more of a connection, so where the signal would normally stop once the cause of pain has been resolved – due to the fact your body has repaired the damaged tissue - with chronic pain, the nerve signals keep firing even after you’ve healed. The pain you feel and the effects can interfere with your daily life, keeping you from doing things you want to do, like to do and need to do.

What is the result? You find yourself kicking your self-esteem as you are creating anger and frustration due to not being able to move comfortably, train or even carry out basic life tasks.

 

Now the link between your emotions and pain can create a cycle. When you are in pain you’re more likely to feel depressed, which can make the pain worse. The link between depression and pain is why doctors can use antidepressants as one treatment for chronic pain – now we have a cycle.

 

Likewise, when we have an injury associated with movement, after every 110,000 thousand steps, so say every 2-3 weeks, our bodies pull away from that pain and in doing so create a small compensation mechanism. Which after another 110,000 steps the brain goes “aaaaah a little less pain this way…” so your body learns and deepens the mechanism, offloading the ‘injured’ area and loading the ‘normal’ one. Creating further imbalances and disfunction.

 

Short term ok, medium to long term not so much! Now we have another cycle.

These cycles can happen slowly, but they gather speed especially when they merge together.

 

Now with those two examples in mind, let’s look at your language, your self-talk, your thoughts.

 

Your thoughts literally create. Therefore, they have the power to either build or destroy your life.

 

Have you already spent so much time changing from that amazing, unique, beautiful you, pulling away from the trauma, the pain, the ‘I’m not good enough’, or ‘I’m not enough’ or ‘I’m never going to be good enough to be loved’… creating numerous small cycles, that alter and adapt the truth?

You may have created a nice quiet (safe) space to ‘heal’ but in the process created a much bigger monster stripping your self-belief, confidence, courage, worth and the knowledge that you are good enough and the faith that you can do what you put your mind to.

Bruce Lee said

“As you think, so shall you become.”

 

Your thoughts, patterns and habits, are the building blocks of your life. This in turn creates your reality.

 

Our lives are affected by the way we think things are, not the way they actually are!

The way we 'think they are' affects us most.

Now review how you approached your New year’s resolutions. Did you use negative cycles in your language, just like our body does with current or old trauma. How many of these negative cycles are you aware of?

 

Jim Rohan said

“"You can have more than you've got, because you can BECOME MORE than you are", that’s the challenge, the other side of the coin reads, unless you change how you are, you’ll always have what you’ve got.”

 

So, my next question is

What are you becoming?

 

Everything starts with a thought.

Written by Dean Attwood

Mindset and Performance Coach and Anxiety Expert

Owner and Director of Integral Workplace Wellness - a Mental Health Support & Training Company that specialises in Staff & Business support for SME’s - www.integralworkplacewellness.com