Our thoughts may try to bring us down the road of chronic negativity, pessimism, and complaining. But did you know that we can retrain our brains to have a positive outlook on life, regardless of the situations that come our way?
Tracie Miles offers a three-part strategy for retraining our brains: notice what we are thinking, reject negative thoughts, and replace them with positive thoughts. We need to use this strategy on a daily basis in order to transform the way we think.
“Proverbs 23:7 says, ‘For as he thinks in his heart, so is he,’ and that means what we think and how we think becomes not only who we are on the inside, but how we live our lives on the outside.”
“By living with an awareness of the negativity that the enemy wants to keep permeating our hearts with, refusing to do that, and trying to think about good things and positive things instead, then it will change the way we live our lives entirely – even if certain situations say the same.”
Tracie explains how our thinking patterns affect our lives by referring to the scientific evidence from her research.
“Science has proven that the way that we habitually think creates physical pathways in our actual brain. If you think about it as in you get off of your front steps every morning and you walk through the grass to your mailbox, over time, you will wear a pathway; you’ll see a visible path there that you normally tread.”
“Our thoughts do the same things in our brains. As we continue to think the same negative thoughts that we thought yesterday, that’s how it has become such a life-robbing habit for us.”
Rather than allowing our thoughts to control our lives and steer them in the wrong direction, God has given us the ability to redirect them.
“Studies prove that as people started to change how they thought; they intentionally try to be more positive, they intentionally ask God to transform them, they intentionally refuse to constantly think pessimistic outlooks about people and situations, that the physiological pathways in their brain began to shift as well.”
By changing the way we think, it can actually change who we believe we are and how we live our lives for God’s glory.
Tracie Miles is a national speaker with Proverbs 31 Ministries and a bestselling author who’s spent the last twelve years inspiring women to become who God called them to be. She’s the author of several books including , and a contributor to Proverbs 31 Ministries daily devotions.
Transforming the way we think
