Your Thoughts Are Not Your Truth

Your Thoughts Are Not Your Truth

Have you ever had an evil thought?

Have you ever had an anxious thought?

How about a depressed thought?

An inappropriate thought?

A violent thought?

Or how about a crazy imaginative thought?

If you have mastered the art of pure thinking I want to congratulate you on being a robot. For the rest of us human beings who think, a lot, welcome to the disturbing thought club….

I never paid much attention to my thought life, until my thoughts began taking control of my peace and sanity. The same bizarre thoughts I had had before, like imagining driving into oncoming traffic, or a ‘what if’ thought like,  “what if I have cancer?”, were not so easily dismissed anymore. When I was battling anxiety, almost all of my thoughts were presented to me as truth. That was an exhausting way to live when the average person, except you pure thinking robots, have 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day!

However, having raging thought assaults everyday for months on end gave me a beautiful gift. It led me to the discovery that my thoughts are not my truth. This revelation set me free from allowing unwanted thoughts to control my emotions, my reactions and even my view of God. I used this revelation to heal and guard my mind from crippling anxiety and despair and do my best to remember this truth when I am hit with everyday emotions and thoughts.

We often just assume because a thought is there that it belongs to us, this is absolutely not true. We have more control over our thoughts than we think we do. We are the judge, the gatekeeper of what gets to stay and what doesn’t.

When your kid comes home from the park with a brand new iPhone singing “finders keepers losers weepers”, you send him back to the park to find the real owner, or leave it where he found it. When you have a thought that causes a negative emotion or goes against your moral compass then sometimes you either need to find the source or leave it where you found it and move on.

You don’t have to invite every thought to your soul party!

Okay that was a super lame subtitle but so much fun to write!!!

You get to decide who and what is invited into your soul party!

This picture cracks me up! Take a moment and think of what each thought here is saying to try and gain access? Just for fun…

Girl with heart necklace “ahhh come on, don’t you know who I am? I’m self loathing, I have been invited to this party like a thousand times before! I like painted the walls here with my fat shaming and invited all my insecurity friends to come, I practically own the place!”

Dude with the printed shirt “Dude, you’re joking right? I’ve been a D.J in this joint for a decade, playing all the top fear of failure songs from the 90’s. remember “Don’t even try or you’ll just get hurt again ” remember that mix? That was me dude! 

Mouth open Girl in the back – “oh my gooooodnesssssss…..Jealousy told me about this place, and now you’re telling me I can’t get in? Daddddddyyyy!” 

Pointing Guy “If you don’t let me into this party you’re going to lose any control you have over this party, I used to be a bouncer here you know! Look for me under W’s!  Worst Case Scenario. 

When you accept every thought as truth, you not only invite those lies into your soul, but they always bring their friends and some of them come with suitcases!  This is how a stronghold is formed.

When you accept every thought as truth, you not only invite those lies into your soul, but they always bring their friends and some of them come with suitcases! This is how a stronghold is formed. Click To Tweet

God does not hold us accountable to the thoughts that go through our heads, it’s only when we take that thought as truth and move it to our hearts that it gains any power or gives us any cause to stumble. When you look in the mirror in the morning and think “Ugh, I’m fat, I don’t want to go to the gym and risk being the ‘fat girl’ in spandex”  that thought can be taken in two directions…. Ignored as a self -deprecating thought and told to take a hike! Or received and entered into our heart as worthiness, low-self esteem and jealousy.

Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life. Proverbs 4:23

The best defence you have against depression, anxiety, low self esteem, temptation is to take control over what thoughts are welcome and which are not, and finding the courage to leave it where you found it.

I believe this topic is huge…. and I want to tackle this a bit more over the next few months, but for now, let me leave you with 5 quick tips on guarding your thoughts….

  1. Write down areas in your life where you struggle emotionally.
  2. Try to pay attention over the next few days and really listen to the thought that comes in, the thought that triggers that emotion.
  3. Take that thought and write it down. Speak it out loud…
  4. Ask yourself 1 question… Would I say this to a child’s face? (example – you’re fat, no-one will ever accept you or why do you even try, you’re not good at anything)
  5. If it would break the spirit of a child, or lead them on a destructive path, ignore the thought, tell the thought No!, pray and expose the thought, but most of all speak truth speak the opposite to the thought (I am loved, worthy and beautiful or God has a purpose for my life and He will make all my ways succeed according to His will.) Now go say those things to a child and watch them glow!!

Now this is such a brief outline, but let’s keep this conversation going, okay?

4 thoughts on “Your Thoughts Are Not Your Truth”

  1. Baby Mama's Blog says:

    Love this. For me, I think some thought: I know I need to leave it, but I accept it in, analyse it, take ownership of it, and then when I realise the consequences, then and only then do I try leave it. By then the damage is done. Just last night I had a thought (a horrible thought with huge repercussions) and I realised afterwards what a lie it was, and that I could either embrace it or just kick it out. After initially wanted to embrace this thought, I realised that this is just simply not where I want my thought life to go, so I kicked it out. And I truly believe that my battle with anxiety is solely (for me) down to my thought life. My mind was a jumble of negative thoughts, a conglomerate of anxiety laden emotions, and a darkness that I didn’t even know I was living in. Not until I fell down that pit. The pit, as difficult and as painful as it was, was exactly what I needed to realise just how stinking my thinking was. Not even my thinking – thoughts are fluid and flow in and out of my minds. It was more the decision to believe every single thought that came into my mind and then sit and wonder why I feel so down, so negative and so anxious.

    https://babymamasblog.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/the-father-of-all-lies/

    1. Sarah E Ball says:

      Isn’t it amazing how our thoughts can be so extreme yet so convincing! It truly is a battle and one you are winning!Thanks for always taking the time to leave a comment.

  2. Mònica says:

    My battle now (almost constantly) since I am facing anxiety is with horrible and irrational thoughts. All kind of thoughts that even though I think I am certain are not true still disturb my emotions as I believe at the moment of the attack are true. I have come up to the conclusion these thoughts actually show I am afraid of the devil and all that comes from him. Please help me pray about this and kindly share with me some strategies to defeat these lies. Thank you

    1. Sarah E Ball says:

      Yes, our thoughts can feel incredibly disturbing but at the end of the day they are just thoughts. Monica have you thought about taking my course, I go into great detail on how to deal with these unwanted thoughts.

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