What was I thinking?
 Did you know that apparently we think around 50,000-90,000
 thoughts per day? (Not quite sure how they go about measuring
 it though - conjures up images of someone with a little
 ‘clicker device’ like they use for counting traffic.)
 Anyway, supposedly (I say this for good reason) some 80-90%
 of these thoughts are the same ones we had the day before
 …Phhhh!
 No wonder sometimes it feels like we’re in a rut. But there
 is a clue in that I think. There is no doubt in my mind that
 repetitive thoughts are one of the key creators of actions
 and feelings - whatever they be of high or low self esteem. One
 would think then that persistent low self esteem would come
 equipped with 80-90% of those same thoughts about the ‘low
 self esteem’.
 But what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Could
 deliberately thinking about something different, help to
 re-pattern those 80-90% of thoughts back to high self esteem -
 or at least, if nothing else, into something neutral (if
 going straight to blazingly high self esteem is a little too
 much for you to withstand *grin*).
 So what could one think about differently? Usually I find
 it’s a good idea to examine what I am pre-occupied with, as
 this helps me understand what I could think less about, or
 change the thinking in relation to something else.
 I recall a time where I had an important (and very public)
 job to do across Australia for a client and I did not feel
 very confident, despite a good reputation and reasonable
 experience. I found myself thinking (as usually happens with
 low self confidence) about all the things that could go
 wrong.
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 Instead of trying to do the ‘positive Pollyanna’ thing
 of thinking about all ‘the positives, I took a different
 tack. What if this experience was merely a good learning
 point for something bigger coming up?
 Although it was a little freaky (thinking that something
 bigger - and harder - was coming up in my future), it
 amazingly started to shift some of my feelings back to a more
 confident frame of mind.
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 I had ‘re-framed’ (more on this in a
 later posting) my thoughts about my current experience. This
 meant that although many of my thoughts about what could go
 wrong were still around, they meant something different! And
 that I think is the key.
 Good luck with your re-framing … it’s a valuable skill!
 All the best!
 Robert
