Thinking means different things to different people. For some it’s a picture, others it’s a voice in their head, maybe you have sounds or feelings that are important?
Depending on the research you read, we have approximately 70,000 - 90,000 thoughts, and make somewhere between 27,000 - 35,000 decisions every day. Thoughts are just thought. They aren’t reality, but they certainly create our reality, and if you have ever experienced just one of those thoughts taking hold, you know how powerful they can be whether they are of the helpful or unhelpful kind.
Our conscious thoughts represent a tiny proportion of the information we are taking in. In fact, we can only consciously take in 137 bits of the 2million bits of information available to us through our senses at any moment. All the other 1,999,863 bits of information are still there, we just unconsciously filter them out.
As humans we have a natural negativity bias though. So chances are, that thought that sticks in your mind, that you are consciously ruminating on, that keeps popping up at the most inconvenient moments, was probably of the unhelpful variety. And yet, thoughts, helpful and unhelpful, only actually have power when we act on them.
The other thing about thinking is that it generates feelings. So while your thinking doesn’t accurately reflect reality, your feelings are a pretty good measure of the effectiveness of your thinking. Thoughts also feed beliefs, again this can be helpful or unhelpful. The tricky thing with beliefs is that they are largely outside of our conscious control so we are usually unaware that we have them, and yet the impact they have on our lives is immense.
Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re right!
So spending time to think about how we think is a worthwhile investment because every single day we have the opportunity to choose who we want to be, and take the necessary action towards that. Are your current thoughts and decisions taking you closer to, or further away from what you want? If you feel; stuck, frustrated, ambivalent, in dissonance, then that might be a clue that NLP Life Coaching is for you.
Get in touch to find out how we can optimise your thinking and strip away beliefs that are holding you back. It isn’t as difficult as you might think!