Control Your Thoughts, Control Your Anxiety
Where do you feel your anxiety? In your stomach? In your chest? It is never in your head. Why is that ? Well that kind of uncomfortable anxious feeling is coming about because your body is reacting in a way to prepare for some type of threat. But where is the threat? Believe or not, that threat came from your mind. Your thoughts created the threat. Most of the time when we are anxious, our lives aren’t in danger at all. That is very true for me. Sometimes our fears bring opportunities. https://bravethewave.org/2020/03/20/on-the-front-lines-of-this-corona-battle/
There is plenty of anxiety to go around these days even if we the Covid pandemic has winded down.
We know from statistics that we are still very anxious and stressed.
- 75 percent of Americans experienced moderate to high stress levels in the past month
- Stress is the number one health concern of high school students
- 80 percent of people feel stress at work
What we need to realize is that perception of threat that our bodies are reacting to comes from our thoughts. The idea that we need to understand and embrace is that we are in control of our own thoughts, so in essence, we are in control of our own anxiety. If you can believe that, then we are in business.
On any given day we think about 30,000 thoughts. For the most part we don’t even think about our thoughts, we just kind of go about our lives focusing on our tasks and sometimes we are at the mercy of our thinking. The problem is that if we look at studies, most of our thoughts are negative. Just by our very nature and because of survival instincts, we think negative thoughts about eighty percent of the time. (1)
In 2005, the National Science Foundation published an article summarizing research on human thoughts per day. It was found that the average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those thousands of thoughts, 80% were negative, and 95% were exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.
We can see that one of the tendencies of the mind is to focus on the negative and ‘play the same songs’ over and over again. (That is called worry, same negative thought over and over in our head.)
There was another interesting study (Leahy, 2005, Study of Cornell University), in which scientists found that, firstly 85% of what we worry about never happens. Secondly with the 15% of the worries that did happen, 79% of the subjects discovered that either they could handle the difficulty better than expected, or that the difficulty taught them a lesson worth learning.
The conclusion is that 97% of our worries are baseless and result from an unfounded pessimistic perception.
Control Your Thoughts, Control Your Anxiety
Pessimism. Negative thoughts. Uncontrolled thoughts. Undisciplined thinking.
When you are spending much of the time thinking about your anxiety, you are not focusing on the role you are playing in the game.
There is only one way to get control of your thoughts and that is by focusing on them. For the most part, we let our minds wander and drift and move toward the negative. We convince ourselves that we are helpless in most situations. Or maybe we feel hopeless or worthless. All of those thoughts are lies. Every single one of them.
As believers we know that we have supernatural power available to us. We have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us in every battle that we face. If we are pursuing spiritual goals and we are working to bring others to Jesus, that is when we get a good dose of spiritual warfare. That is one area that I have experience in. Let us look at each of the thoughts that keep us feeling anxious and worried all the time.
Thoughts of Helplessness
For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.
(1 Timothy 1:7 NIV)
This is one of my favorite verses in the bible. It is for this reason that we need to see the Word of God as the ultimate standard for our faith and for our behavior. Jesus talked about the Word in this passage,
The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—
So here we have a choice, just like with our thoughts, we can choose to believe Jesus or not. He is telling us that Scripture cannot be broken. It is unbreakable and it is the foundation of our faith life. So if we believe what Jesus is telling us about the Word, then we are really kind of tied to the idea that we don’t have a spirit of fear and timidity.
If we accept this truth, but we allow ourselves to be controlled by fear and anxiety, we are living a lie.
Well, what is the truth? We were given a spirit of power, love and self-discipline. The truth is that we are not helpless. We have power, love and we have truth.
Remember that Jesus is the truth. That is what he called himself. “I am the way and the truth and the life.” If we are being overrun by thoughts of fear, timidity and anxiety, we have chosen to live a life that is inauthentic. We need to understand this basic principle because the spirit of fear and timidity is something that WE CREATED. It is a false self. It is inauthentic.
My book series is called the Authentic Self series. It begins with a road map on how to move towards authenticity and then focuses on passion and confronting fear. I am finishing the fourth installment that deals with pain and suffering. In order to understand our “Authentic Self”, it would be helpful to define it,
Our “Authentic Self” is the person God had in mind when he created us. It is the person we were meant to be, doing the tasks and assignments we were meant to complete, using the gifts and talents we were designed to use, with the love we were meant to share.
Thoughts of Hopelessness
The Greek word for hope is Elpis. This is a little different than the way we think about hope. It is more like eager expectation. Like when you are getting ready to board a plane to fly to your vacation destination. You are in a good mood and you are eager to have time to relax and enjoy your family. It is something you look forward to. That is exactly how God wants us to think about heaven. Here is an excerpt from my book Brave the Wave on hope,
I’ve come across people in my life who have little or zero faith. I’ve seen the look in their eyes at the death of a loved one. One thing’s missing. Hope. Not the hope of wishful thinking, but the hope of the Bible.
Biblical hope is conveyed by the Greek word elpis, meaning “confidence” or “trust.” Our hope is to be more like eager expectation. I’ve seen this kind of hope in people of faith when they’re nearing death. Sometimes they’re eagerly awaiting it, almost like they’re in line for a ride at Disneyland. Excitement and eager expectation. Smiling and waiting. They have total confidence in the beauty and wonder of the place that Jesus has prepared. They believe Jesus when he says,
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.”
We either believe Jesus about heaven or we don’t. We either believe this promise or we don’t.
The people of faith who are excited about dying and being with Jesus believe this statement down to their very bones. You know who else has no fear of death? People who’ve had near-death experiences. The majority of them lose their fear of death. They believe they now know exactly what it’s like, and that’s one of the traits of people who’ve undergone those experiences. No fear.
We need to decide whether we believe and trust Jesus. There will be trouble, but he’s with us. We’ll die, but he has prepared a place for us. We have the Bible’s brand of hope: eager expectation, not wishful thinking.
Here again, we have a choice to believe Jesus or not. We have a choice to trust in Him and we can do that by making a effort to control our thoughts. We can choose what we want to think about. We can choose to be more disciplined in our thinking.
Thoughts of Worthlessness
The last category is thoughts of worthlessness. Just looking at the cross should remind us that we have value, worth and that we are loved. That is why we should keep a reminder of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us around us at all times. We need to constantly be reminded about the greatest act of love the world has ever or will ever see. We are loved, we have value and we have worth. We should feel confident, powerful and we should have a drive to move towards our purpose.
My next book on pain and suffering should be coming out in the next month or two. If this blog or email has helped you in any way, please share it with your friends and family. Spread the word. We should be focused and fearless in pursuing truth and telling others about Jesus. That is the call for every believer.
Your Brother In Christ,
Johnny Cavazos MD
Bravethewaveweride@gmail.com
Bravethewave.org
Discover Your Passion, Release Your Power: How to fulfill Your Purpose In the Power of the Authentic Self now available for purchase !!!