By Annette Brooks
Looking for a New Year’s resolution that can help you break free from negative thought patterns, enhance creativity, and help you adapt better to new situations? Or maybe you’d like to experience more effective decision-making, better emotional regulation, and improve your overall life satisfaction.
Changing the way you think isn’t just about adopting new habits or learning new skills. It’s about fundamentally altering your perception, understanding, and interaction with the world. Akin to renovating your mental home, the goal is to think in ways that open your world, allowing for more growth, contentment, innovation, and compassion.
Check out these seven ways to start your thought transformation journey.
1. Understand Your Current Thought Patterns
Before you can alter how you think, you need to become self-aware of how you currently think. This involves self-reflection, introspection, and digging into understanding why you think the way you do.
Journaling can be a powerful tool here, helping you trace back thoughts to their origins. Practicing mindfulness and meditation may also increase awareness of your thought processes, allowing you to observe your thoughts without judgment.
2. Challenge Your Beliefs
Question everything. Ask yourself why you believe certain things. Are these beliefs serving you, or are they limitations? Try stepping outside your comfort zone a bit to engage with ideas and people that
challenge your views. This doesn’t mean you have to change your beliefs, but it can encourage growth.
3. Adopt New Perspectives
Read widely. Reading or listening to audiobooks on science, philosophy, and art from diverse cultures and viewpoints can offer new ways to see the world. Embrace travel and exploration to experience different ways of life. Even if you do this virtually versus physically, it can profoundly impact your thought processes.
4. Embrace Lifelong Learning
Your brain is like a muscle — it thrives on exercise. Stay curious and adopt a beginner’s mind in your daily life. Ask questions, explore, and never assume you know everything about anything. Learn new skills, whether it is a language, a musical instrument, a new craft like knitting, or pottery, forces your brain to forge new pathways.
5. Cultivate Positive Thinking
Viewing daily life with a lens of gratitude and noting what you’re thankful for can shift your mindset towards positivity. Don’t shy away from positive affirmations. Though often underestimated, repeating affirmations can reprogram thought patterns over time.
6. Engage with Creative Endeavors
Creativity isn’t just for artists. Create something by writing, painting, building, or even cooking. It can stimulate different parts of your brain, promoting flexible thinking. Apply creativity to problem-solving, too. Approach problems with a creative mindset, looking for solutions outside the conventional.
7. Surround Yourself Wisely
The company you keep influences your thoughts. Surround yourself with thinkers, innovators, and positive influencers. And don’t hesitate to change your physical or digital environment to inspire different thoughts. A cluttered space can lead to cluttered thinking.
What About Professional Help?
For many of us, changing the way we think is challenging. Our thought patterns are often anchored in deep-seated beliefs, often formed during our early years. If you try a few of these DIY measures but still find yourself thinking the same old way, consider a psychological treatment called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
During CBT, your psychologist or therapist will help you:
Identify negative and irrational thoughts and distortions. Challenge their validity through techniques like questioning the evidence for your thoughts, seeing situations from multiple angles, and analyzing unhelpful beliefs. Learn practical skills like problem-solving and provide social skills training to help you handle life situations more effectively, thus altering your thought processes and achieving a more objective perspective. Use tools like structured diaries or worksheets to record negative thoughts and guide you through the process of recognizing and altering cognitive distortions.
