The power of what you tell yourself
What has the most power – what you experience, or what you tell yourself about what you experience?
The reality is that what you tell yourself about the things you experience is more powerful and has a more lasting effect than the experience itself.
What you tell yourself determines so much of what happens after the experience. It determines your ongoing thoughts, emotions, and feelings about yourself and others, and can end up determining the course of your thought life, emotional wellbeing, and in some cases, even your whole life from that point on.
Particularly important is what your thoughts tell you about yourself and what becomes established in your heart and mind as a result. Because you and I live out of what's established there.
Here are a couple of examples to show how this happens in our lives…
A child drops a cup, breaks it, and spills their drink, and they get told that they are clumsy and a bad child. The spilled drink and broken cup are an unfortunate incident, but what was said now becomes lodged in the child's heart and mind – they are bad and they are clumsy. Another experience of breaking something happens and their mind tells them that happened because they're clumsy and bad. The original statement by an adult, over time and reinforced by other experiences, becomes an internal belief. That internal belief becomes how the child thinks about itself. As a result, their brain is on alert and constantly warns them to be extra careful when holding things. They may live in fear of breaking stuff. They may even become increasingly clumsy because their belief begins to create that reality in their life. They grow up believing they are a clumsy person who will have to live their whole life being extra careful in case their clumsiness does damage to things.
An adult is assaulted and robbed – one experience, one time, but their mind tells them, "Nowhere is safe, you must be on high alert everywhere you go, looking out for danger." Their emotions create a feeling of fear around their ongoing safety. Every time they go somewhere they keep looking around them, assessing where the danger is most likely to come from etc. If the person does not take control of their thoughts they will end up living life feeling unsafe anywhere. That will end up determining where and when they go places, whether they can go places alone etc.
The accuser of our soul (Satan) has a vested interest in taking the things that happen in our lives and using them to try to bring us into bondage. Something traumatic happens in life and into that situation he inserts twisted insinuations and lies and uses them against us. These insinuations may be based on facts concerning the situation or they may be outright lies, but in the moments surrounding a situation, our heart and mind are very vulnerable and open to attack and suggestion. Those lies attach themselves to previous beliefs we’ve formed about ourself and voila - instant condemnation and shame hit us. Our mind begins to play the tape of those insinuations and lies over and over, our emotions get amped up, and before we know it we are condemning ourselves and believing we are somehow to blame, even if we are not.
While we may not be able to stop those insinuations, lies, and attacks from happening, you and I do have the power to decide whether we are going to accept them and allow them to establish themselves in our lives and affect us on an ongoing basis.
In the end, what we tell ourselves as the result of an experience that we have will determine so much more than the experience itself. What we think, and what we tell ourselves will either imprison us and bind us to that experience, or it will allow us to process it in a healthy way, move beyond it, and live in freedom from it.
What can you or I do about that?
How can you stop your thoughts from imprisoning you and binding you to a situation?
Recognize that you don't have to accept every thought that comes into your mind. And you shouldn't, without discerning their source. Thoughts have sources. Check the source – Is it from God? Is it from the accuser (and the kingdom of darkness)? Is it your own heart and previous wounds, or your own soulish desires speaking to you? Is it the voice of society (the beliefs of the world)?
Recognize that you may have a whole lot of different emotions and thoughts. Don't let them run wild in your mind. Take hold of them, capture them, examine them.
Ask – are they truth, or are they something that will bring me into bondage if I allow them to take up residence in my heart and mind? What are these thoughts trying to tell me about myself? Are they tearing me down, seeking to destabilise me and imprison me, or bind me to this experience, or are they speaking life, dealing with my wounds, and setting me free to live without fear and shame?
Ask – what will be the outcome (the ongoing fruit in my life) if I embrace this line of thought? Where will these thoughts lead me? What will my life look like as a result?
If you're a Christian, ask – do these thoughts line up with how God sees me, who He says I am, and what he's promised for my life?
Talk to God, and ask Him for His wisdom, because He will gladly give it. Ask Him for strategy in how to walk forward out of a place of tormenting thoughts and into walking in freedom in your thought life, and therefore in your actual life.
Establish your dominion over any negative thoughts and take them captive, make them submit to you as a child of God, to Jesus, and to what Scripture has revealed as the truth about who you are in Christ. Take authority over any ongoing attacks from the enemy of your soul, the accuser.
Work with the Lord on seeing your mind renewed. Find out what He thinks about you, and what His heart and plans are for you and your life. Think about those things, speak those things over your life, and see, or imagine, yourself doing them. Walking in freedom is worth the work it takes to establish healthy and righteous perspectives on yourself and on life's situations.