The Mind Connection: How the Thoughts You Choose Affect Your Mood, Behavior, and Decisions (11 page)

• Our lives would be so much better if we formed a habit of thinking before speaking or taking action.

• Scripture teaches us that our mind is a battleground where a war is being fought.

• Instead of being “unthinking,” you can train yourself to think about what you are thinking about.

• Be intentional in your thinking—take the time to think through your day before you begin it.

Books have been written and movies have been produced about Anne Frank. These works always bring out how great her perspective was in the midst of the atrocities of the Holocaust. This didn’t happen because she was a pessimist and focused on everything that was wrong in her life, but because she had a rare ability to see beauty in the midst of horrifying events. I think most people reading her story would say, “I wish I was like that.” We will not become that way by wishing, but by purposely deciding how we will view life.

Each of us has a perspective on life. We see things and think about things in a specific way. Some are very quick to see all the problems and magnify them, while others have made a choice to minimize the impact of difficulty by looking for the beauty, the good in life and in people. On a scale of one to ten, where would you put yourself when it comes to your overall thinking? Ten would be perfect, and one would be slightly better than zero. I think I might be at about a seven, and on some days an eight. I still have a lot of growing to do, but if I keep a good perspective, I can be happy about the fact that I am no longer a one on the scale like I once was. Lots
of years have passed since God began teaching me the power of my thoughts and how to think purposely instead of passively. And I am very glad to have the experience that I now have so I can share passionately with you what I’ve learned about the mind connection.

Was Anne Frank just an optimistic girl who happened to be born with a great outlook on life? She may have had a few “happy genes” that not all of us have, but she still had to make choices and decisions about how she was going to think and what she was going to say. Far too many people passively wait for something good to come their way, when they should be aggressively choosing to do what is right, including learning to think right.

There is a fable told of a father from a wealthy family who took his son out to the country in order to show him how poor people live. This father and son spent several days on a farm with a family most people would consider extremely poor.

After the trip, when the father asked the son what he had observed, the son replied, “I saw how blessed that family is! We have a pool in our garden, but they have a creek with no end. We have imported lanterns, and they have the stars at night. We buy our food, but they grow theirs.” The dad was speechless as his son remarked, “Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are.”
¹

Perspective is a wonderful thing. The father in this story saw only what the poor people didn’t have, but the son saw what they did have. The boy, upon seeing it through a different lens, obviously ended up feeling his family was poorer than the people they went to learn from.

The young man in this story was assured of having an amazing life that was not based on his circumstances. Anyone who learns
to see life the way he did, who can find the good in everything, cannot be defeated by circumstances.

In our American culture today, I wonder how many millions of times each day someone thinks,
The world is a mess!
I hear it all the time, and you probably do too. They lower their head a bit, then shake it slowly back and forth in dismay, and say with either an angry or a depressed voice, “The world is a mess!” It never makes me feel better to hear it, how about you? To be honest, I get weary of the same old attitude and dreary outlook. You might be thinking,
Well, Joyce, the world
is
a mess!
While it is true that we do have problems, I cannot give up the belief that good things are happening also, and I would personally like to hear more about them.

Sin abounds these days, and when that is the case, circumstances are never good. However, talking incessantly about the problems in the world today won’t get rid of them. I am not implying that we should ignore the violence and sit idly by and do nothing but sing happy tunes and smile. We need to pray, we need to be informed, and we need to take God-inspired action to see things turn around for the better. But we don’t need to rehearse over and over how bad things are and behave as if God is incapable of changing things.

When circumstances are bad in any society or anyone’s personal life, focusing on them and saying negative things about already negative situations doesn’t increase our personal joy or anyone else’s. People need hope, and we can make the choice to be committed to giving it to them. The next time someone tells you how bad things are in the world, say something like this: “Yes, things sure are bad, but I do believe that God has a plan for His people.” Anyone I have said that to always responds, “Yes,
you are right.” They just needed to be reminded of something that had gotten pushed into the background of their mind because of the massive amounts of negative input coming at them.

Jesus teaches us by word and example to be positive about the problems of life, and so do the apostles. Jesus said that in the world we would have tribulation but that we should cheer up because He has overcome the world (see John 16:33). Awesome! Keep that in mind when life seems bleak. When the disciples were in a severe storm and Jesus was asleep in the bottom of the boat, they became very frightened and were focused only on the storm. But Jesus rebuked them for their lack of faith, and He asked them why they were upset since He was with them (see Mark 4:36–40). Jesus wanted them to see Him as greater than the storm.

Apparently Anne Frank saw God when others saw only persecution. She must have been looking through God’s glasses. The Lord sees things differently than we often do. We see problems, but He sees possibilities. We see messes, but He sees miracles. We see endings, but He sees new beginnings. We see pain and pressure, but He sees spiritual growth.

You might wonder,
Doesn’t God care about all the horrible problems in the world?
Yes, He certainly does, and let me assure you that God does have a good plan for not only society in general, but also for each of us individually. Hang on to that biblical truth, and don’t let anything going on in the world take it from you.

I am in the midst of studying the book of Exodus, and I noticed that when all the terrible plagues were being unleashed on Egypt due to Pharaoh’s disobedience, God’s people were kept safe. Exodus says that when God sent a swarm of something called “bloodsucking
gadflies” (and I am happy we don’t have those around these days, unless they have just been renamed “mosquitoes”), He set apart the land of Goshen for the Israelites, which had no swarms of gadflies (see Exodus 8:21–22). No matter how many bloodsucking gadflies you run into every day, they don’t have to be a problem for you!

And when all the livestock were killed, God made a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt. He then declared that nothing belonging to the Israelites would die (see Exodus 9:4). When Egypt was plummeted with weighty hail, only in the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were, was there no hail (see Exodus 9:26).

And when it was so dark in the land of Egypt that the people could not even see well enough to get out of bed for three days, all the Israelites had natural light (see Exodus 10:23).

I do realize that people reading this, or other people you might know, have suffered property loss due to floods, hurricanes, or fires, and it would be easy to say, “Wait a minute, God didn’t take care of them.” My point is that even though Anne Frank and many others like her throughout history endured much suffering, their perspective allowed them to have joy in the midst of the agony. Our attitudes can make our problems harder to deal with or easier—it is up to us.

I’ve seen this up close and personal. Our ministry has been heavily involved in disaster relief, and I have seen individuals who become bitter and blame God, but I have also seen others who always find something they believe God spared them from or is doing for them. I don’t even need to tell you which of these two types of people were happier.

I think Anne Frank made a choice for herself. She couldn’t do anything about her situation, but she could control her attitude,
and by doing so, she became someone whom God could use as an example to the world. Just think about it—although it has been about seventy years since she died, Anne Frank is still well known today. I have not read a book about anyone from that time period heralding their negative, hopeless, bitter attitude, have you?

I find these things to be
very
encouraging, and they give me hope concerning the things I see taking place in the world today. Let me say firmly that
God has a plan for his people
, and we should think, speak, and behave as if we believe that He does. Let’s learn to see through the glasses that God looks through! Let’s learn to have His perspective!

Since our perspective involves our thought processes, we would be wise to realize that it also affects our moods. If I am in a bad mood, I may need a perspective adjustment. Perhaps I am looking too much at what I don’t have and not enough at what I do have. Or I may be looking at what people don’t do for me, instead of what they do for me. Our perspective on anything, especially events and people we don’t like, have a long-range effect. How we view events that took place as far back as our childhood may still be affecting us in a negative manner.

When I learned to think of the abuse in my childhood as something that was unfortunate, but something that could be used by God for good, the pain began to lessen and I began to heal emotionally. As long as I deeply resented my father for sexually abusing me and my mother for not protecting me, I had a wound in my soul that could not heal. But when I decided to try to understand the way my father was raised, and my mother’s fear and
weakness of character, I actually started feeling more sorry for them than I did for myself.

If you are dealing with a broken heart or a wounded soul, try asking God to help you make a connection between your perspective and your current feelings. If you are willing to change the way you view the situation (and it is not always easy), you will begin to make progress toward wholeness instead of remaining broken. Life breaks all of us in one way or another, and it is up to us whether we remain broken and bitter or we let God use it to make us better and more powerful.

Let me take a moment to say that I fully understand that it is much easier for me to write about looking at painful things in a positive way than it is to do it. However, it is possible and is, in fact, the only choice we have unless we want to remain miserable. Although opening up old wounds for the purpose of having them cleansed is painful, it is more painful to remain wounded and broken all of our lives. We cannot do anything about the past, but we can do a great deal about the future. I encourage you not to remain stuck in a painful place when God is offering you healing. It is never too late for a new beginning.

I believe that Anne Frank was empowered by her perspective on her circumstances. It enabled her to remain hopeful, which is vital in difficult times. God’s Word states that “hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12). When we are hopeless, everything else about us is sick. Where there is no hope, lethargy sets in and we
begin to experience atrophy. The longer we are hopeless, the more negative we become. It is still amazing to me that we have the power to change all of the negatives we feel and may pass on to others unintentionally just by choosing to see things the way God does. We should not deny our circumstances, but neither should we give them permission to control our attitudes and behavior. God has given each of us power, and we can live above our circumstances, but only if we choose to have a hopeful, positive perspective.

If you decide to view things that are considered problems in a positive way, I can assure you that someone will promptly tell you that you aren’t being realistic. But the good thing about faith is that it keeps you joyful and energized while you are trusting God to change the current reality. Someone may even say, “Don’t be so childish,” but that is exactly what God tells us we need to be if we intend to enjoy the life He provides. In Anne Frank’s case, her amazingly good attitude didn’t ever deliver her from her circumstances; in fact, she and her family were discovered in their hiding place, and they were taken to a prison camp where she eventually died of typhus, just as many of the other children did.

So you might say, “What good did her positive perspective do her?” I am certain that she was much happier than many of the people around her were. She kept a diary of her days as much as she could, and when it was discovered after the war, it was eventually translated into seventy languages and is now one of the most widely read accounts of the Holocaust. I know that her attitude has inspired millions of people and helped them make it through their difficulties. That alone is a good thing, and we can always find something good if we take the time to look.

The apostle Paul suffered greatly. He was beaten several times and imprisoned on a number of occasions for no crime other than believing in Jesus Christ and encouraging others to do the
same. There are several verses of Scripture in 2 Corinthians 4 that I would like to quote and make some comments on.

It doesn’t sound like Paul’s circumstances could have been much worse, and yet in the midst of them, we see a glimmer of hope and an attitude that refused to give up and cave in to a negative mind-set. Anyone who will refuse to give up no matter how challenging life may be is a far better and more powerful person than someone who is without challenges.

I often say that I have had two types of faith in my life, and I believe we need both of them. One is the type of faith that asks for and receives an immediate pleasurable answer. God delivers quickly and miraculously, and we get very excited. The second type of faith is one that doesn’t receive the answer it had hoped for, but continues to believe anyway that God is good and that He is working in ways that cannot yet be seen. Although not as emotionally exciting, it is my personal opinion that the second type of faith is the greater faith. We don’t get to choose which way God will work. At times He delivers us from something difficult, and at other times He gives us grace to endure it with a good attitude. What God does or does not allow us to go through is His decision and His alone, because He knows and understands things that we don’t.

We live life forward, but we can only understand it backward. When we are going through something, it may make no sense at all. The pain we feel disables us from understanding, and yet later on, we can look back at the painful events and clearly understand that God’s choice was better for us than what we would have chosen. There is also the possibility that we will never understand, but even then the heart of faith bows in worship, knowing that trust requires that we may always have some unanswered questions.

If I were to say what Paul was saying, it might sound like this:

If it will help you, why not copy this translation I have offered and put it someplace where you can read it easily anytime you need a perspective adjustment. It may help you refocus your life lens and see like Paul did.

To put the finishing touches on Paul’s perspective, he says this:

When what I see is discouraging me, I often go to these Scriptures and remember that there are things I cannot see with my natural eyes. They are far better things than what I am able to see. It is our choice—we can choose to believe God’s promises and expect something good to happen, or not to believe—but I highly recommend believing. It has always proven to be the best way to live!