Want to change your life? Change your thoughts.

The hard truth about change: if you do not change, your life won’t change. If you do not change your inner world, your outer world won’t change either.

Our inner world is so powerful, and yet it is often overlooked as the key to a happy and fulfilled life. Instead, we are caught in the race to “success” and constantly looking for satisfaction outside of ourselves. The result is a constant craving for more: a better job, a more loving partner, more interesting friends, more exotic vacation locations. The list is endless.

Many of us give in to this craving and have it drive our choices. This may bring short term results, but usually comes at a cost. Believing that “If I have a different partner, I will be happy” or “If only I get that promotion, I will be successful” will actually bring you further from the fulfillment you are looking for. Why? Because the outer world can never truly give you what you are looking for. As a result, you just keep craving and spinning round & round. Until you are left tired, unfulfilled and completely confused of who you are and what you want.

So what is the alternative? What is this inner world that has the keys to bring me satisfaction and change to my life? In the western hemisphere of the world, we grow up with relatively little awareness of our inner world. If I speak from personal experience, I actually thought that I am my thoughts. There used to be no space between me and my thoughts; they were my identity, they were me.

This “thought” (no pun intended) actually makes so much sense when we look at one fundamental element of Western philosophy: Cogito, ergo sum. This latin statement by René Descartes translates as “I think, and therefore I am”. This statement perfectly describes how I felt about myself for more than 25 years: I am my thoughts.

If you grew up similarly, I have some groundbreaking news for you. We are not our thoughts. We simply have them. This shift from being our thought to simply having them creates space between the real you and your thoughts. And this observing space is exactly what you need to make lasting changes in your life.

We are lucky that Eastern practices and influences are now common practice in the Western world as well. Maybe you meditate, maybe you practice yoga. Some of these practices may have already helped you to create space between the real you and your thoughts. The stickiness of your thoughts to your identity dissolves. The glue unglues. Meditation really helps to experience that you are not your thoughts versus merely knowing this to be true mentally.

So how do our thoughts influence our lives? Our thoughts drive our emotions. In turn, our emotions drive our behaviors and actions. And these result in your reality. What does this mean? It means that your thoughts color your reality; they create your reality. So if we want to change our reality, we change our thoughts. Simple as that. I hear you thinking: easier said than done, isn’t it?

Of course, changing our thoughts is for most people not something we do overnight. The average person thinks between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those thousands of thoughts, 80% of thoughts are negative and 95% of thoughts are the same repetitive thoughts as the day before. Wow. The repetitiveness of the thoughts shows that they are patterns, which are formed over long periods of time through conditioning. With practice and dedication, we can change our thoughts and with that, our lives.

Usually, the most intense thoughts come from something that is popularly called ‘your inner critic’. This is a great place to start working, because if we can change these only slightly, we start seeing immediate results. I work on the inner critic with all of my clients through different exercises, and the space that gets created as a result is truly magnificent.

Everyone has an inner critic. It is that voice that is part of our identity that criticizes and sabotages us. For some people, the voice is small but big enough to stop them from really making their dreams come true. For others the voice is so huge that it is overwhelming and prevents them from engaging in life entirely.

This inner critic is formed during our early childhood experiences, generally before the age of 7. The experiences we had as a child and the way we dealt with them shape us today. Our inner critic is a normal result of years of conditioning. And even though it is normal, in most cases, it does not serve us at all. Thoughts like “What if I fail?”, “I can’t do that, I have never done it”, “I will never be successful with x”, “I can’t handle that”, “I am not attractive”, or “I am not smart enough” are all examples of how the inner critic may show up. It is highly personal what thoughts are present, but it all boils down to an essence of “not being good enough”.

So let’s take an example of how this plays out in our diagram of thoughts, emotions, behavior and reality. Let’s say you would really like to switched roles to a field that you have no experience in, but a lot of enthusiasm. You saw an ad on a role that sparked your inner fire. You really felt: wow, that would be my dream job. Let’s look at the diagram in action:

While looking at the job again, you realize you have never done anything like it. You are ready for the change, but they are asking all these requirements and experience that you do not have. You think: “I am not good enough for this role”. The emotion that comes up is self-doubt and sadness. As a result, you do not apply for the job, and quite frankly do nothing. Your reality becomes that you feel stuck in a job you no longer want. This only feeds more thoughts of the inner critic and you start really believing you are not good enough.

See what happened? The inner critic colored your reality. The great news is that you have a choice. Always. You have the choice to allow these thoughts to come in and overpower you, or you can take charge and stop believing them. With practice, new thoughts can color your new reality. Of course, the old thoughts are like a highway in your brain, and your new thoughts like a small forest path. Over time, you can change your reality by practicing. In this way, you slowly dissolve your highway of negative self thoughts and you create a bigger and bigger road for your new empowering thoughts.

So what if you chose to believe instead that you are inherently curious and a fast learner. You have never done this role specifically, but that must mean you can do it! Your emotions as a result are filled with excitement. You check who the owner of the role is and decide to reach out with an enthusiastic message that you’d love to learn more about the role. Your enthusiasm was contagious and you are invited for a cup of coffee. Even if you don’t get the job, you at least have now an opportunity to learn more!

This second scenario is probably so much more appealing than the first. Many of us though, do not recognize we are in the first because we associate our identity with those negative thoughts. To come back to the hard truth about change: if you do not change, your life will not change. If you do change your inner world, you will change to extends you never thought possible.

Let me close by this Buddhist saying that challenges Descartes “I think, and therefore I am”:

“The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master”

Let’s start using our minds for our own benefit. Let’s have it work fór us, not against us. Your mind is a wonderful tool you can put to work, so that you can live the life you really want: lighter and full of purpose.

You can do so much more than you think.