Reset: A 7-Day Plan for Building Positive HabitsSample

Life or Death

“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Philippians 4:8)

God made our brains, and He knows best the value and importance of thinking about whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. Philippians 4:8 is not just a sweet, sentimental verse in the Bible—it’s life or death. Your thoughts have the power to seriously enhance or completely destroy your life. If you see the same stream of thinking coming back again, and again, and again, it’s time to own up to it and let the mental battle begin.

Yesterday, we took time to recognize our default ways of thinking and replace them with truth. We talked about how our past experiences helped create default ways of thinking. Today, we will look for patterns in our thinking using a concept in psychology called frequency bias, or the Badder-Meinhof phenomenon.

Frequency Bias

Have you ever heard a new phrase or song and somehow over the next few days or weeks started hearing it everywhere? Or maybe you learn about a style of a house while watching HGTV, and next thing you know you spot it all over your city. Could there really be an increase in that new style of house? Or are you just more aware of it now?

With frequency bias, it’s not that there are more colonial-style homes in your neighborhood, but simply that you have a higher awareness of them. And awareness changes everything.

There’s so much going on around you in one particular 24-hour period that it’s impossible for your brain to absorb it all. But when you bring your attention to something—which is called selective attention—you begin to make note of that specific thing more and more often. Your brain tunes into it!

When it comes to our thoughts, do any patterns emerge? Are there any themes that you tend to default to again and again?

Change the Pattern

God permits us to change the pattern. We have the power and control to choose which thoughts we will tune into and ruminate on throughout the day. So much of the Bible aligns with healthy psychology and counseling. God knows our tendencies to default to the negative, so we’re being asked to make it a habit, a daily practice, to tune in to whatever is good, pure, true, and lovely. We’re being challenged to increase our awareness of the right thoughts and beliefs throughout the day and throughout our lives.

Don’t just default to your usual, mindless patterns. Change the patterns. But to do that, we’ve got to stop and take note of our patterns—the good and the bad—so we can begin to change the way we think. We have to recognize our patterns if we want to replace our patterns. And when we do that, it will begin to change everything.