The One Thing That Will Change Your Life in 2024

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Today I want to talk to you about the tool of taking your thoughts captive.  I have seen in my own life, the greatest changes in the past couple of years from changing the way that I think. It sounds really simplistic, but honestly, I don't even know what I was thinking. I knew I had a lot of feelings that I didn't like. I knew I wanted to change the way I was showing up every day, but I didn't really know how to do that. 

I was so focused on changing my outward circumstances, changing other people, changing my behavior and actions, and changing these feelings. I was constantly beating myself up for having these negative feelings and it never, ever, ever, ever occurred to me that those results that I was getting in my life, the feelings, actions, and behaviors that I didn't want, were all a result of my thinking.  Our thoughts are so powerful, so I'm going to walk you through that today. I’m going to give you some practical steps that will help you as you move forward into this new year. My goal is to help you see the value of taking your thoughts captive, and give you some processes to help you with that. 

For a moment, ask yourself if you've ever had these thoughts: "We are so far behind."  "My child is so difficult."  "Homeschooling shouldn't be this hard."  "I don't know what I'm doing."  "I'm  failing my kids."  "I'm ruining my relationship with my children."  "My child isn't working up to their potential."  "I am totally disorganized."  "I am such a hot mess."  "I am so overwhelmed and exhausted."  Can we have thoughts like that?  I know, I sure did, and I know I still do at times.  How did those thoughts make you feel?  As I read through that list, I get a little pit in my stomach. It makes me feel discouraged. It makes me feel ashamed.  Sometimes it makes you feel angry, right? 

We all get all kinds of emotions from thinking those thoughts. The thing is that most of us don't even know the thoughts that we're thinking on a regular basis. We're so focused on just doing all the things, keeping everyone busy, getting the results, trying to control our children and our environment, and come up with a perfect homeschool plan. We don't even allow ourselves the ability to pause  and reflect.  It's so key that you do that, and as you do, you may realize you think a lot more of those thoughts than you actually first realized.  Our brains run on autopilot, so most of our thinking is the thoughts that we've always thought. 

A study published in 2005 by the National Science Foundation found that we have between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day.  Out of those thoughts,  85% of them are negative  and 90% are repetitive.  Why is that? Why did we have so many negative thoughts, especially compared to positive ones? And why are so many of our thoughts 90% repetitive?  Well that's because it goes back to how our brains are structured. 

First of all, our brains are wired to keep us safe, and that is a survival instinct. That's so important, right? We are automatically searching for danger, for what's wrong. Our brains tend to automatically try to find the negative in order to keep us safe.  As we develop those patterns throughout our lives, they become more and more ruts, if you will, in our minds.  Those neural pathways become stronger and stronger. 

According to neuroscience, there's a law called Hebbian Theory that states that “neurons that fire together, wire together,” which means that the more that you think something, the stronger that neural pathway becomes. The stronger the neural pathway becomes, the easier it is for your brain to think that thought in the future. Think about it like you're trying to clear a path in the forest. At first, it's going to be difficult. You're going to work up a sweat, because you’re working so hard. You might get cut by the thorns, and you have to clear the branches. It's a lot of hard work, but once that path is cleared, you can just easily walk down it. 

It's the same thing with our brains. We have these thoughts and we're thinking them day in and day out, over and over and over. Some of these you might've had your whole life. Some of these stories develop really early on in childhood. “I'm not good enough.” “I'm a failure.” “I don't know what I'm doing.” “I don't have all the answers.” “I got to get it perfect.” We develop these stories and we all have different ones. The more that we reinforce those stories, the easier it is for our brains to go down that path. So, what we want to do is learn to think about our thinking. The fancy word for that is called metacognition.

Metacognition is the ability to think about our thoughts. Instead of them running on autopilot, like the processor on your computer, in the background, where we don't even notice it, we want to stop and start to look at our thoughts. That might mean that we can't be constantly busy, busy, busy. It might mean we have to have breaks throughout our day where we can think about, "oh, well that situation didn't go very well.  Now I'm feeling all this anger." Hmm. "What was I thinking about my child in that moment?" "What was I thinking about myself today when everything kind of went off the rails?"  

Romans 12:2 says, "Be transformed by the renewing of our minds." In order to renew our minds, we have to actually know what's in our mind. We have to actually know what our thinking is first. Can we just acknowledge for a minute, just how brilliant this Charlotte Mason was? She lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There was this new field of scientific study coming out during her time called physiology, and she was super interested in it and learned a ton about it. It was what kind of, what we would call modern day psychology neuroscience, and the stuff that she says is so amazing. 

In Volume one, Home Education, on page 108, she says, "We think as we are accustomed to thinking." Again, that neuropathway.  She says "In this way, we think as we are accustomed to think. Ideas come and go and carry on a ceaseless traffic, in the rut, let us call it. You have made for them in the very nerve substance of the brain. You do not deliberately intend to think these thoughts. You may indeed object strongly to the line they are taking. Two trains of thought going on at one in the same time. And objecting, you may be able to barricade the way and put up a no road sign and big letters to compel the busy populous of the brain to take another route." So again, she's using that metaphor of a train running along train tracks, and when the tracks are laid down, when the rails are there, it's easier for the train to go down that path.

Sometimes we may strongly object to these thoughts.  We don't like them. We wonder where our thoughts even come from. “Why am I doing this? I don't want to think this.”  Our brains go down that road that's easiest for them. When you first start looking at your thoughts, you need to give yourself grace and realize that you’ve been thinking these thoughts for a long time. Try not to judge yourself for having the thoughts. Just acknowledge, “Oh yeah, there was that thought. Oh, wonder what that means.” Start to catch yourself thinking about your thinking. 

I love that God made our brains neuroplastic. I love that he enables us to actually transform our minds. What an amazing blessing that is, but most of us don't even realize that we have the power to do so. We think that we're stuck  thinking the same thoughts we've always thought, having the same feelings we've always had, and experiencing the same results in our lives. I'm here to tell you that that is not true. As we move forward to a new year, this is a great opportunity to take a look at some of those thoughts that are not serving you anymore, and to say, “No. We're not going down that road anymore. We are paving a new one.” 

How do we pave a new mental road? Well, it's not as easy as, you know, paving a driveway or something like that. It takes deliberate work. We have to deliberately take the thought captive. But, I love that verse because you can kind of picture it like that thought is running down this road and we're chasing after it. But, oh, we're not going down that road anymore. We're going to go down this one.

If there is a thought that you notice that you're thinking on a regular basis that is not serving you, and it's making you feel things you don't want to feel, and it's making you take actions that you don't want to take. Take note of these. Maybe write them out as you think them so you are drawing attention to them. This will make you aware of them and help you think about your thinking. 

Now, what do you want to think instead?  Allow yourself to write that out, allow yourself to repeat it.  What happens when we repeat a thought over and over and over again, is that it becomes a belief. When we have a belief, our brain tries to find evidence to support that belief. This is called confirmation bias. Our brains want to find evidence to support what it is that we believe. So, if you have a story, you have a thought that you've been telling yourself over and over and over again. Your brain will find evidence throughout the day to support that, because it wants to help you. Our brains are here to help us, but sometimes they kind of malfunction and we need to help them perform a little better.

Let's say you have this belief that you are totally disorganized, that you're a hot mess, or that you're never consistent.  Throughout your day, your brain is going to show you evidence to support that belief.  “Oh, you forgot to call the doctor.” “Oh,  you can't find your kid's math book.” It's going to show you all these ways to prove that you're so disorganized. So, what can you believe about yourself instead?  It might be too huge of a jump to believe that you're Marie Kondo or Martha Stewart, or the most organized, put together person on the planet. That's very unrealistic. 

Your brain can't go there. Instead, take a little step up, "Every day I'm growing in my ability to be organized."  How does that feel?  Well, that feels empowering, that feels encouraging, so my brain is going to start looking for evidence throughout my day of ways that I was organized. My brain will start noticing things like when I was ready for a history lesson. Maybe I remembered to pack an extra snack because we might get stuck in traffic on the way home from soccer, and I was able to keep the kids from complaining about being hungry. These are all things my mind will start to recognize because I am retraining my brain to find all the ways I am organized. 

In 'Parents and Children', volume two, on page 48,  Charlotte Mason said, "But what if from childhood they had been warned. Take care of your thoughts and the rest will take care of itself. Let a thought and then it will stay. It will come again tomorrow and the next day will make a place for itself in your brain. And will bring many other thoughts like itself. Your business is to look at the thoughts as they come. Keep out the wrong thoughts and let in the right. See that ye enter not into temptation.  This sort of teaching is not so hard to understand as the rules for the English nominative.  And it is of infinitely more profit in the conduct of life,  It is a great safeguard to know that your reason is capable of proving any theory you allow yourself to entertain."  

I love this part. She's so funny. She said, this is not as hard to understand as English grammar people. Okay. English grammar is way more complex than what she's telling you right here about our thoughts. Our reason is capable of proving any theory we allow ourselves to entertain. That's what I'm talking about here with this confirmation bias, and if you read her writings about the way of the will and the way of reason it's teaching your children about this. There are reasons when we have a belief. A thought that we say to ourselves habitually becomes a belief. 

Our brains are going to use  "reason" to prove that it is right, so we want to train our reason to understand this about ourselves, to understand that we will try to prove whatever it is that we are believing about ourselves.  We're going to train our brains to start walking down another road. The way to do that is by telling your brain what you actually want to think, so start feeding it with the thoughts that are going to serve you.  You have to be intentional about what thoughts you are planting in your own mind.  So, what do you want to think? What do you want to think about yourself?  What do you want to think about your homeschool? 

These are some that I wrote down. “I am the perfect person to homeschool my children.”  “I am on a journey and progressing at the perfect pace.”  “I respond with patience, trusting that all things are working for good.” “I am grateful to be homeschooling my children.”  “Good things happen every day in our home.” “I have control over my thoughts, feelings, and energy.” “I will not fear because I work in cooperation with the divine teacher.” “Mistakes are an opportunity to learn and grow.” “I am becoming better each day.” Those were some of the thoughts that I wrote down that I wanted to think about my homeschooling. 

I also have thoughts for all areas of my life. “I am a loving, engaged mom and I make meaningful memories with my kids.” That was something that was really important to me. “I am fit and active and spend a lot of time outdoors.” What is it that you want to tell yourself? Another one was, “I am learning to take control of my finances.” “I see miracles every day. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” That's another thing I tell myself often.  You know what happens when I tell myself that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living? What does my brain do for me? It's so helpful. It tries to find the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. It shows me more and more good things. We have to be intentional about what we want our brains to think.  

So, how do you want to show up in 2024?  Not just in your homeschool but also in life.  What do you need to believe about yourself in order to show up that way?  What thoughts will you need to think on a regular basis to change the road that you've been walking down?  As we approach a new year, it is the perfect time to reflect on how we've been living our life. Do we want to keep it this way? If we get to the end in 2024, and nothing has changed, what will we have lost out on?  

We can set a path and be intentional about the road that we want to go down instead. If you need help with this, I am doing a Three Day Goal-Setting class. It'll be at the end of December. So if you read this late and you miss it, I'm also starting up another group coaching program in January, called 'The Confident Homeschool Mom.' You can find out more about that at  thefeastlife.me/join and get on the waitlist for that class. Breaking these old thought patterns is not easy. We have long established neuro-pathways, and we have made big, deep ruts in the mud of our brain. 

If we want to start paving a new road, just like paving a new path in the woods, it's hard. It is so key to have someone who can be like a coach and walk you down that process. You need to have a community to keep you accountable and support you as you're making these changes in your life. Whether you join my program or not, find something that you can be a part of. Find something where you can find that community, and you can find that coaching and support to help you walk this path because it is not easy, but it is possible. Transforming your mind with little tiny tweaks, little tiny percentages over the course of years is going to completely change the direction that your life is headed. I'm excited to see what is possible for you. So again, thank you for reading and remember, Life is a feast. Let's savor it.