The Mind - Mental And Emotional Health Sample

Our Thought Life 

All seeds of thought produce a tree of a result. If those thoughts are rooted in aggravation, then a tree of aggravation springs forth, and the same will be true with depression. I remember that during the years I struggled on and off with depression, I would purposely think thoughts that made me depressed, or would allow myself to dwell on those thoughts, never knowing that I was producing my own tree. For some reason, I couldn’t connect the dots. I was blinded. When I was driving along in my car, my mind would grab hold of negative and depressive thoughts. My mind was attracting these negative thoughts until I found myself being agitated and aggravated, and a cloud of depression would begin to hover over me, and yet I had no idea that I was the actual person manufacturing this cloud. I struggled for a long time until I found a way to get out. It was my desire, when I got out of that ditch, to help others to find the way out of this same ditch. 

You cannot choose your circumstances, but you can choose your thoughts. Emerson said, “A man is what he thinks about all the time.” You would be shocked if you could record your thoughts all day and then play them back in the evening. You would be shocked to discover that the thoughts that you gravitate toward may be the very source of many of the problems in your life. Norman Vincent Peale once said, “A man is not what he thinks he is, but what he thinks, he is.” Marcus Aurelius, a great philosopher who ruled over the Roman Empire, said it in 8 easy words: “Our lives are what our thoughts make it.” If you don’t like your life, examine your thoughts. He also went on to say, “The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts.”

What are you coloring your life with? Are you coloring your life in pale shades of gray and black and dismal dull colors? Or are you coloring your life with the rainbow: joy, health, excitement, enthusiasm, optimism, goodwill? It’s up to you. I have always enjoyed how one of the modern translations explains in Proverbs 4:23 to “Be careful how you think, your life is shaped by your thoughts.” Today is a good day to begin to redefine and reposition yourself through thinking good thoughts that spring forth from a relationship with God.