Eliminating the toxic parts of thoughts.

Ask A Life Purpose Coach said...

Great insight! What are some of the things we can do to eliminate the toxic parts of the thoughts?

August 19, 2007 1:51 PM

Since the thought is real (both the emotional content and the information content), it cannot be eliminated. Instead, it has to be re-linked to more positive content, or negatively reinforced.

To re-link a thought, you must take the bad emotional experience and separate the informational content from the emotional content. You can only do this in your left brain, where you can logically think about the thought. As you think about the thought, visualize the bad emotions as bad, and bad for you. Then, (still in the left brain), think about something positive that has good emotional chemistry and resolve to link the old thought with the new feeling. After some time, the old information will bring the new emotion, automatically. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

For example, I knew a toxic person who would always say negative things and always make me feel bad when we were together. But this was a friend, someone I benefited from in many ways. And I wanted to save the relationship. But the toxic personality was more than I could take.

So I backed away from the situation and reviewed it in my left brain. I took the perspective that there was something cosmic in the relationship, and there were forces outside us that didn't want us to succeed in the relationship. I also knew that my goal was to be full of the Holy Spirit in this situation.

After some time, I was able to do the spirit-filled things (singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, count self lower than other, love, etc.) when the events that formerly caused the bad feelings happened. I re-associated the bad event with new spiritual content, and saw it was just one more battle in the spiritual war. Now, I (almost) look forward to those times, because they link me to the higher plane.

The new associations must be practiced over and over, so those real thoughts overpower the original ones, by sheer numbers of the new emotions that have been linked to the old events.