Ever wonder why you seem to fall short no matter how hard you work or how many times you try to accomplish something? Maybe the problem is you!
Most people have a background narrative that continuously plays in their minds virtually every waking moment. These thoughts can dramatically impact your success by limiting your performance in both your personal and professional arenas. To put it simply, “You are what you think.”
Research shows that learning to manage your thinking gets you out of your own way so you can achieve your goals. How we behave is a result of the influence our thoughts have on our decisions. In short, your thinking impacts every aspect of your life. Your thoughts process what you see, hear, and experience, which in turn is integrated into your worldview. This thinking is reflected in your decisions, which control your emotions and behaviors.
By revising the narratives in your mind, you have the opportunity to realign your future with a different mental portrait of yourself.
Understanding how to manage your thoughts enables you to influence your thinking rather than your thinking influencing you. Through taking control of your thinking, you are able to change your behavior and performance.
The first step is to understand your internal narratives and how they become the dialogue of your mind. Your narratives constantly play in your mind – they are the accumulation of everything you have learned, been told, or said and include everything you have done or experienced and every interaction with other people, whether one-on-one or in a group. Your dialogues are the thoughts you have based on those narratives, and they manifest as the thinking that influences how you react to or behave in a situation you are dealing with.
Here’s an example: You were probably told not to touch (or you actually touched) something hot at some point in your early development, which inserted a narrative that when you feel heat you can get burned. Throughout the rest of your life, this narrative is called upon by your mind to create thinking “don’t get burned,” which results in a dialogue not to touch the flames of the campfire you are sitting around with your family on your camping vacation. You don’t even know this is the process running in your mind, although it controls your behavior to ensure you return home unscathed.
Most of your narratives operate in the background and your dialogues emerge almost instantaneously from how you think based on your narratives. Change that thinking and you are able to change your behavior.
This is where intentional thinking comes in.
Intentional thinking helps you manage the complexities of relationships, reasoning, learning, problem solving, and decision making. It is a conscious process that creates awareness so you can determine what thoughts you want to change. Intentional thinking enables you to override your subconscious narratives and dialogues by exerting a deliberate effort to process a situation you are facing through examining all the information you have available, so you don’t settle for the “obvious” or “intuitive” solutions your thoughts are telling you, but you also proactively consider external factors.
What are external factors? There are unlimited possibilities in any given situation. For instance, when an issue arises at work, the external factors may include listening to the perspectives and insights of other people on your team, recognizing and respecting that their observations are based on their individual narratives and dialogues. This might require examining and balancing the validity of this information and exploring how all of this diverse input might be part of the ultimate solution.
The key is that intentional thinking requires deliberate effort and can be mentally exhausting if not done properly. However, without it you may find yourself stressed, anxious, or in turmoil. In the team example above, imagine how your team members would feel if you, as the team leader, went into a meeting and said the team would be implementing your solution with no further discussion. Chances are your team members would feel disempowered, demotivated, and disengaged. They will do what they are asked, but without empowerment, motivation, and engagement, the resulting work product may prove dull and lackluster.
To implement intentional thinking you need tools to ensure you explore options. While some individuals can do this through reading self-improvement books, it takes time and time is a valuable commodity. Many turn to therapy, which can take years to dig deeply to understand the underlying narratives. Others turn to coaches who can help you realign your thinking quickly, which enables you to change your behavior, elevate your performance, and achieve your goals more expeditiously.
So, how are you managing your thinking?
Valerie El-Jamil is a former attorney and executive with over 20 years of experience in the business, legal, and career management arenas, where she frequently served as a catalyst for change. A certified coach with more than 10,000 hours of coaching experience, she led a team of coaches for five years that assisted over 5,000 executives and professionals in planning and achieving career transition, advancement, and enhancement strategies. Valerie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Southern California and a Juris Doctorate from Loyola Law School.
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