Taking Time Out To Think About How You Are Thinking About What You Are Thinking About.

STINKING THINKING.... It can fowl up your life.  It can cause you strife. It can allow toxic emotions to send you down into a spiral of unnecessary pain, shame, guilt and disdain.  STINKING THINKING can bust up a fellowship, trip up a friendship, destroy a beautiful relationship, and make your life a fragmented trip to a point of NO return.  So PLEASE spurn STINKING THINKING! 

Now its one thing to say don't let STINKING THINKING  be your guide.  It is quite another to figure out how you can do anything about it... NO JIVE!  Yet, I think you can make a plan that will help you gain the upper hand over ST you see.  So you say to me, "Man What's the plan?  I have allowed ST to really hurt me and I wanna know what I gotta know to be a person of grace and put 'STINKING THINKING' in its place."

Well, let me tell you friend, I have had my share of STINKING THINKING on my end of life, and I have had my share of the strife... and all the  stuff  that keeps me from being enough that can really hurt in a way that is tough.  So I have a plan that has worked for me, and I think that I am not the only me that can be free to cope with STINKING THINKING... just between you an me.

So I am gonna take a little turn in this conversational route and say, Take Time Out To Think About How You Are Thinking About What You Are Thinking About.  Practice trying this out!  And you will begin on a journey (or as I say... route) to over come or have an inkling of how you can begin to overcome STINKING THINKING.

Now this may be kind of odd for folks walking this earthly sod to TTOTTAHYATAWYATA.  The initials are enough to make you nod, but if you do it, you are less likely to be one who blew it with your STINKING THINKING.  

OK.  Let's not make this a bummer.  Let's try to learn something here by doing it by the numbers.  Number one is very fun because it is different from people who just run and run with there ST with out thinking about how there thinking is making them be.

TTO... Here we go, not to and fro, but Taking Time Out in order to evaluate how your ST is effecting others (and of course you) rather than doing what you gonna do that may not help  others, and it especially may NOT help you.  

Second:  Once you have stopped.  Sit down (Ok to be a couch potato now) prop up your feet and get ready to lounge with pen or pencil in hand; and you get ready to write about whatever is on your mind... whatever will soon be your plan... that is if you want to figure out what is coming out of your STINKING THINKING.

 Now I have found that (as I lounge) I write to the" Wonderful Counselor"  "Almighty God" cause  God can help us with you and me, especially if ST is keeping us from being free.  So number 3 is to begin to write about what you concretely see, hear, smell or taste.  Don't be in a hurry.  Cause haste will especially now make waste.  Write what you observe is literally going on around you.  Be truthful about what you see, cause soon you will interpret the concrete... so be brutally honest about what you see... about what is in front of ye. What you write is for your eyes only.  No one else can see it. For if they do you might just wind up lonely.  Of course God can see it and take it cause, (even if you get boulder) as tloml says, "God has BIG shoulders."

Fourth:  it is time to interpret.  Let us stay on target and not get off our circuit.  As you begin to see what you see, hear what your hear and observe what you observe, feel free to be free and ask some questions like "What do I believe about this? What is my opinion about this? What do I assume about this? What do I expect?  How do I evaluate all this?"  Answer these questions about what is going on, and you will begin to interpret how you are thinking about what is happening in your hearts home. Now you are working on... TTAHYAT.  Yes indeed that will where you are "at."

Before your eye can bat, you are working through STINKING THINKING.  Cause, without winking, you are taking Time Out TO THINK ABOUT HOW YOU ARE THINKING.  No you are not thinking about how others ST because you are working on your own ST just to be FREE.  Sure... as you process this, others can be brought into the equation; however, be sure you know that you are NOT fixing anyone... just a looking at the situation.

FIFTH: We are coming to another portion.  We are going to understand how your thinking effects your affect or... your emotions.  Emotions will usually follow your thoughts and they will follow all the thinking produced via your "oughts."  The "oughts" are your rules for life that rule you for good or ill.  They give you victory or they cause you pain or strife.  If they are dysfunctional your strife will cause strife on top of strife, but if they are healthy (holy) they will give you life.

Therefore, what you are feeling will obviously come next... cause thinking usually breeds your feeling as we said in the previous text.  Use a simple formula for sorting out the stuff of the head (and the heart) and you will more likely find how your ST starts.  The formula is simple (and me you do not have to thank) cause the formula comes from who knows where, but it is clearly... "I feel  (blank) because (blank)."  So "I feel happy because the weather is beautiful today" is a way to describe how a beautiful day parts the way for you to say with glee the beautiful day makes me happy:o)  See?  Get the motion??? The feeling comes from the notion or, as I said ... a thought which produces an emotion.  "I feel sad because my hamster died, Dad..." is another way to show an emotion of pain giving me pain because some  bad  happening was thought of as bad, and the  emotion showed as "sad" not glad.

WAHOOOOO! I say.  Let us continue on the route.  Let's keep on keeping on Taking Time To Think About How You Are Thinking About What You Are Thinking About. So now for the summary, you have the concrete data, the interpretation of the concrete (wow this is getting NEAT!) So now you have the notion of how the interpretation (the thought) leads you to emotion. 

SIXTH:  Evaluate the emotion notion that is based on the thought that did the provoking.  Is what you are thinking healthy, whole or true?  Or is the basis of the thought fouled up or untrue.  Is the thought a part of one of your character flaws... or something you learned that is unhealthy and should cause you to give pause.  Might have to have a healthy friend  or small group help you with this, but if you have some emotional healing it might be you do not have to do this.  The key is be as honest as you can be with ye, and evaluate the thought and its impact on your emotions and other people...  see? 

For example, will the action that follows cause trouble with the folks you see?  Or will it leave you alienated from most of the folks that are hindered by what the thought or emotion will cause you to be?  Will the action that springs from the thought/emotion notion be harmful or cause undue duress?  Actions will follow, most thoughts and emotions.  So just letting them happen without processing them can cause STINKING THINKING... or maybe a commotion.

So evaluate the thought/emotion notion.  And decide, while there is time for balanced tact, to decide what you want before you really act.  Cause acting without thinking and  deciding without healthy volition (I AM thinking)  can lead to a condition of some serious STINKING THINKING.   Of course this process is good to figure out --after the fact-- how you acted out in a bad acting out act, but its more painful to process when the bad actions have caused harm.  It is better to process a head of time (if you can) and cause no alarm.

SEVEN:  Well... we have talked about the concrete, interpreting by the emotion/thought notion, thinking about what you want so that you can decide  a whole way to act.  Now we focus on how to get to the fact of what is the best way to get to the healthy act.

This might be as easy as A , B , C if you really want to be free (and of course  figure out by fact) your plan of how you are gonna choose to act.  A would be look back to the  past... again don't hurry don't go to fast.  What did not work in a similar situation, and ask what did work... this can be very good for this deciding to act situation.  Borrow from the past what worked, and don't repeat the history of using things that did NOT work...  Repeating the "bad" past might make you look like a pitiful  jerk.  B tells you be cool (not a fool!)  What is working in the here and now... do the same as you did in A, and choose to borrow what works in the now for the choice of a better day.  C is the finale as we come to the end... make a GOOD choice... a choice that is win win.

Well there you have it.  I hope it is clear how you can get an idea that you will find so dear.  It is an idea of overcoming STINKING THINKING, and it is a way of a less traveled route... a route where you have Taken Time Out To Think About How You Are Thinking About What You Are Thinking About.  

Live A GREAT life in Christ!

Al