Can We Change Our Thoughts

We cannot change our thoughts by trying, but there is no specific method or instruction for changing them. Many people offer advice on changing thoughts, but it ultimately comes down to personal realization and finding missing information. Habits and addiction play a role in our thinking patterns. 12-step programs aim to help individuals establish right thinking about their problems. The success of these programs is debated, but they encourage a spiritual and altruistic way of life. Changing thoughts requires a natural and organic process, not forced or prescribed actions. Observing our thoughts can lead to changes over time. Ultimately, each person must find their own path to changing their thoughts. Recently, I was asked the question, can we change our thoughts? My response was that we can, but not by trying. So that probably raises a question within most people, if the answer is yes, but not by trying, then how? The truth of the matter is that there is no how. No one, no one can tell anyone how to change their thoughts. There are many things that, if you look for help by putting a search into a search engine on the internet, there are many things that people will try to, and some of these people are working for organisations and they are fully endorsed by these organisations. Some of them work on their own and they write blogs and they gather information from other places but it doesn't matter where they get the information from, it doesn't matter where the information comes from. What matters is the fact that no one can tell you how, no one can tell anyone how to change their thinking, their thoughts. Thoughts are a habit for the most part, thoughts are a habit. We all have habitual thinking and there is no how to change a habit. There may be ways, there may be methods. Let me give you one example. Many years ago, when I was 24 years of age, I entered a 12-step programme and a 12-step programme is basically a list of steps, a list of instructions, a list of things to do in order to achieve, well let's just call it sobriety. I use the word sobriety because to me the word sobriety implies or means a state of mind. That state of mind is supposed to be one of equilibrium perhaps but certainly to have a clear and steady mind. With respect to a 12-step programme, that would mean a clear and steady mind in respect of whatever the 12-step programme is about. Some are about, well there's one that's about food, there's one that's for drugs, there's one for gambling and so what the members of these 12-step programmes are trying to accomplish is to establish some right thinking about that which has been a problem in the past whether it's food or emotions or gambling for instance. Now there's been much debate over the years from certain quarters about these, whether these, whether these 12-step programmes actually work or not. I know that the one that I have belonged to, in that one the members have a habit of saying, in fact, okay the literature says that this way of life which is a spiritual way of life which is an altruistic way of life, helping others to achieve sobriety as it were. So what is said is that this way of life is not a theory, it has to be lived. Therein lies the problem and a lot of people, many people do struggle with that way of life. Imagine having gotten yourself into a position where you are addicted to a certain behaviour or a certain, the intake of a certain chemical, whether that is alcohol or some other substance drug, whether prescribed or otherwise. Imagine being addicted to something like that and then one day you decide or realise that you realise what you're doing to yourself with this fixation and you come to the point where you want to stop, you want to make changes, that you're suffering beyond your comfort zone, it's not really the right way of saying it, but you've had enough and so you realise that the best way to go over this is to stop. This might be easier with certain things like drugs and gambling, when it comes to food that might be a little more difficult and that I think takes a bit of understanding. Well how can anyone be addicted to food, but it's not the food, it's the fixation of the, well I don't really claim to understand it fully, but I imagine it's the fixation of the comfort that is felt, everybody's heard of comfort eating, you sit down at the end of a day and you relax, you watch a movie and you have ice cream, you have crisps, potato chips for those in the US or other parts of the world, but whatever you have, your snacks and you have your candy or sweeties or whatever and these, whatever it is, never healthy. I don't think anybody eats fruit as a means for comfort eating, it might be a possibility, I don't know. So from this understanding you can get a picture as to why I understand thoughts to be habit, to be habitual, that we get stuck in cycles of thought, it's only by realising the error and no one can tell us, tell or try to tell an alcoholic or a gambler that their behaviour is not doing them any good and you will be met with anger perhaps, but they certainly will not receive it in the vein that it is intended. I'm very tempted here to say that the only way to change your thoughts, but that would be received as a how-to, directions for how to change your thoughts, which is something that you would have to try to do and that's not what I said, what I said was not by trying, you can change, anyone can change their thoughts, but not by trying. It is an organic realisation that there is something, something missing, a piece of information that is missing and when you realise that, when you find that information slipping into place and it's not something that you can, you can't make it happen, you become willing perhaps, but don't take that as something to try to do, it won't work. You know, in today's world, it is obvious that most people are looking for a way to achieve something, a habit that they want to change and we're all looking for other people to tell us and we're all looking for other people to tell us how to do it, but really the only way and it's not even a way, but the biggest chance of success is in seeing for yourself, let me rephrase that, it's for one to see within oneself what is required and the change will happen naturally, organically, without trying. Anyone above a certain age and therefore with a certain amount of years of life experience will be able to look back over their life without analysing, without anything, just look back and realise that they are not the same person as they used to be, they don't view things in the same way that they used to. When you can observe that, you may not be able to pinpoint how or why many of those changes, your opinions, your views, views have changed, how your opinions have changed, how your outlook has changed, how anything that happens or changes within the mind is probably indescribable. I remember times when I formed opinions about certain things that were to shape decisions in my future, now my past obviously, and not all of them, not all of them benefited me, but those decisions are not what I'm talking about. When I went to the 12-step programme, I heard many, many things that I had never heard before, new ideas, new concepts, new concepts, new understandings, and most of them, most of them I didn't understand, but a great deal of them challenged my thinking, they challenged my way of viewing the world. One of the steps in the 12-step programme suggests that maybe a power greater than yourself, a God, a higher power, a universal force, whatever you want to call it, and maybe you don't want to call it anything, maybe it's something you've thought about and have decided that such does not exist, well that's up to you. I had made my decision by that time, age 24, and when I went looking for help with my problem, which I don't see as a problem anymore, I don't tend to use the word problem anymore, I thought I had escaped the whole higher power God issue, I thought I had sidestepped that. That took a bit of time to go over and round and, well not round, I didn't get round it, but even my views on that changed over time. Again, because my views on such were challenged by way of conversation, and my involvement in that 12-step programme was definitely transformative, was definitely transformative, and that transformation happened over time, and I can honestly say that it didn't have to take anywhere near as much time as it did. I've now been involved with the 12-step programme for 30 years, and I can honestly say that I have been what I have called in this talk, I have been sober, away from my addiction or addictive behaviour. I've been away from that for quite some time now. There's a 17-year period where I was gaining the benefits, but also receiving the consequences, living in the consequences of my inability to change my thinking. I couldn't change my thinking on many things. I couldn't begin to list any of them, but when I saw through that, that was when the change happened. The change happened for me. The change happened within me, and the question is, for anyone who's struggling with something, is, what am I missing? What am I not seeing? What is the truth that I am blind to? We all live with a narrative, normally playing in our own head, and we live with that, and we believe that. The issue is here that it is not always completely our own narrative, so when we can see what has happened, when we begin to see what is missing, when we begin to see the root of the problem, and it is a problem, although I've said that that is a word that I don't often use anymore, it's a problem because it's causing problems. The word I prefer is situation. We have a situation, but if it's causing you problems, why beat about the bush? It's a problem. So when we can fully admit to ourself that we have a problem with our thinking, that may be the first step. Beyond that, I cannot say. I can't tell. There is no way to make anyone see anything that they're not seeing, because what I see isn't necessarily what anyone needs to see. So this is the reason why I say that we may be able to change our thoughts, but not by trying. It must be part of a certain flow. It must happen. As I said, it happens organically. If we force it, it will most certainly not happen. If we try to force change, psychological change, it won't happen. And saying, as I have done in the past, saying that you have to observe your thoughts, that's prescriptive, that's a how to do, that's an instruction. That's as far as I'm going to go on that, but I would retract those comments. I would say ignore what I've said in the past, especially if you are a member in our Facebook group. I would say ignore everything that I've said in the past. This is the beginning of something new. And in the Facebook group, I will not talk about how to's because really there is no how to. There are no set of instructions. There is no technique that is worth anything, not for any problem, not for any subject. How do I know? I haven't tried them all, but I've tried a lot of them. And even the ones that I have tried, they've come to nothing. They've yielded what I call first aid for the psyche, a temporary fix. And this is why I would retract everything that I've said in the past, because I have been part of that thought system, even having been trained to some extent in some of that, like NLP, neuro-linguistic programming. I don't want to give any instruction, anything that even has the slightest scent of an instruction or a technique. And so in ending this audio, I would say I would change what I have, what some people have come to know as something I always say, but this time I would change it ever so slightly. And instead of saying, be good to you, I would perhaps add, as best you know how.