The Most Important Thought Exercise You Can Ever Master

THIS! When you catch yourself, do what you can to take back control of your thoughts.

Satan has deeply planted lies within you that because you didn’t know they were lies he planted, as you dwelt on them, they grew root and became beliefs. Those thoughts started producing fruit, “providing evidence” that “it must be true”, and you have come to believe are true because they have been there so long. They have been there so long, they are now deeply held beliefs, plants and weeds that hurt you and choke out the true plants and fruits you yearn to harvest. They are beliefs that must be dug out from the depth of the deep and pervasive roots. They can not co-exist with the thoughts and plants with fruits you desire, deeply held beliefs, even though untrue, choke out the good thoughts that bear the fruits you desire.

So when you identify one of Satans painful plants or weeds, a thought or belief that causes shame, unworthiness, depression, emotional turmoil, etc., dig it up, and in its place “plant” three positive truths to help crowd out the old plant/weed from returning.

In time you will transform your internal garden of thoughts and beliefs from a dry and barren dessert to the Garden of Eden, the fruitful, beautiful garden that God planted for his children. That internal garden will then stop attracting the people and experiences into your life that validate the lies, and instead attract those who appreciate and love the truth, and bring forth the desirable and delicious fruits of thriving and joy.

While you are feeling good, make a list of truths that later you can draw from. This is like planting seeds in the greenhouse so when you need to pull up the lies, you have plants ready to go that you can transplant instead of looking for a packet of seeds and then becoming frustrated that they aren’t growing fast enough when you REALLY need them!

Then, keep the plants watered. Review your list occasionally to keep them refreshed, know where to find your list, and have it easy to access wherever you are.

Finally, now that you have done your part, pray. Ask God to help your new thoughts become deeply rooted and help transform your garden. Ask Him if he has any plants (truths) he thinks should be add to your garden. When I did this, I was amazed of what he added to my list. Things I was able to add that felt extra powerful because these were things he felt about me, someone who knows me perfectly, because I am HIS child, HIS creation. This is feeding your garden.

Finally, ask him to send you angels to help you identify the weeds and have the strength and courage to get them out and help trend your garden.

In a few years you will look back and be in awe at how your life has transformed. You will be helping in the process that binds Satan for a thousand years. But best of all, you will be free, you will be the master of your thoughts instead of servant.

Yes, it is hard. Really hard, especially in the beginning.

I’ve been doing it for 13 years. Actually, I was recognizing the lies of Satan for long before that for at least a handful of things, and I began refusing to let my mind believe them and just went with whatever the opposite was. It took the edge off, but those roots were still there, choking out the truth.

Then 13 years ago I started confronting what my thoughts and beliefs and really working on them. It was hard work for the first couple of years. That sounds so daunting writing it, but I am so glad I kept picking it up and going after it again. It was a lot of go and stop and go and stop. The next 5 years was still work, but not nearly as hard. I recognize my thoughts and beliefs sooner, and I had become better at the process, and those weeds came out faster and I was enjoying what I was planting and excited for their fruits, because the fruits of the plants from the previous couple of years of effort were bearing, and those fruits were delicious! I wanted MORE!

The last six years has been relatively “easy”. Tending my garden, and noticing some stray weeds that pop up occasionally here and there. I’ve found a few that got pretty big before I noticed them, but they were surprisingly easy to remove once I prayed over them. Just last week the thought that came as answer to my prayers completely pulled them up, it was the Savior that weeded them out, not me.

So yes. It is HARD work. But it’s worth every effort. Just keep trying. It’s like learning to walk. You fall and you fall and you fall. But little by little you learn little adjustments and pretty soon you have your balance before you fall. And then you can take a few steps before you fall. And at some point, you are running! And even after we master walking and running, we still get tripped up sometimes, and not even because of something we trip over, but just wham! You are on the ground.

But you never stay down on the ground when you fall. You might rest and catch your breath and recover, but we always get back up, dust ourselves off, and even limp around or use crutches for a time if we are injured. You might even need help getting up, and help with injuries if it was an especially bad fall. But we always get back up.

Although, it is a choice. A person could crawl to a place where they can curl up and hide from the world and wait. But that would be death. So you have to decide, is this the end? There have been more times than I can count that I have been so done with earth life, I wanted to go home. But I knew it was not the end, not my time, and my only options were to stay down and be miserable (and continue to have a headache and stuffy nose from all the tears) or to get back up, look at what my choices were, and make the best choice I could for the immediate now. That led to making choices for the rest of the day and by the next day I wasn’t “limping” around anymore, and feeling better and because I wasn’t “limping around” anymore I could evaluate what caused me to fall and root out those weeds that tripped me up.

You may have seen in the self-help area of my website the reference to Byron Katie. She has a simple process that really helps dig out the weeds. There are tons of videos walking people through it on YouTube and Facebook. Books too. I think it’s what made the process easier after the first two years for me. It’s the process I return to even now when I get tripped up and find myself on the ground and think, what the heck just happened? That came out of nowhere!!

I invite you to explore her work, and give it a try. You can find it at TheWork.com