Transformative Transfer of Our Positive Thoughts

Posted on August 06, 2019 by Alicia F Griffin, One of Thousands of Spirituality Coaches on Noomii.

I’m Alicia F. Griffin, the founder, and pastor of AFG Ministry, A Faithful God Ministry. I am also spiritual and mental coach and author. My goal is to encourage and inspire people by promoting self-love and self-confidence. I feel one of the first steps towards loving our inner-beings is transforming our thought process.

I want to start with a funny short story. There was a minister who decided to use a visual demonstration for one of his sermons. The evening before his sermon, he decided to find four worms in his backyard and placed them in four separate jars. He put the first worm into a jar filled with alcohol. The second worm went into a jar filled with cigarette smoke, and the third worm went into a jar filled with chocolate. The fourth worm went into a jar filled with good clean soil.

The next day, the minister placed the four jars on the podium in front of the congregation. He proceeded to preach his sermon, and after his sermon, he held up each jar to show the results. The first worm in the jar of the alcohol was dead as well as the second worm in the jar of cigarette smoke was dead. The third worm in the jar of chocolate was also dead. The fourth worm in the jar of good clean soil was alive.

The minister then asked the congregation, “What can we learn from this demonstration?” From the back of the church, someone yelled, “As long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won’t have worms.” That pretty much ended the service.

Do you believe that our thoughts are powerful? Do you believe that we have total control over all our thoughts? Today, I am going to talk about the process of transformative transfer of our thoughts. Our thoughts are the largest battlefield. Some of us wake up in a battle and end our day in the same fight.

Who likes to garden? Do you have a green thumb? I’m a seasonal gardener. I like to garden during the spring and summer. The struggle is real for my flowers and plants during the winter and sometimes the fall. I like to refer to our thoughts, our mind, as our mental garden, and in our mental garden, we have containers and a large field, area of land. The containers harvest the positive emotions and feelings; like self-love, self-compassion, encouragement, and acceptance, the good yield. The good yield contributes to our mental well-being. See we’ve compartmentalized all the good harvest, the good yield. We’ve allowed the good yield to become complacent and confined in containers that we manually water and take care of. For example, in my front yard, I have three plants in containers that I always forget to water. We tend to forget to feed and nourish the good yield, the good harvest in our containers.

The containers are supposed to be used at the beginning stages of growth, temporary, not permanent. We are supposed to transfer our good harvest from the containers into the ground to allow for it to be fruitful and plentiful. I read that a shark in a fish tank will grow about 8 inches, but in the ocean, it will grow 8 feet or more. Basically, our contained good harvest, the good yield will only grow to the size of the container, the pot; meaning our self-growth and self-development are limited to the extent of that we’re allowing. We are limiting ourselves.

The other area of our thought garden is the open ground. This area is a hot mess. This is where all the weeds have overgrown and prosper because this is the area where we have the automatic sprinkler system installed to water and sustain the weeds; continuous feeding. We feed this area of weeds the most. I consider the weeds the enemy. The enemy will deceive, steal, and even kill our good harvest, our peace, and joy, in our thought garden. It replaces the good yield with anxiety, stress, and worry. Sometimes the weeds will deceive us by growing flowers; deceiving us to make us think it’s good for us.

The more we feed the weeds, the stronger the root becomes, causing it to multiply and harder to remove or kill. When the season changes to gloom, rain, and storms, basically the hardships and trials, this is when the weeds receive their food. This is the same with our thoughts, when the season changes to hardship and trials, we instantly feed that circumstance. We feed the enemy. Feeding the circumstance causes us to lose our perspective on our current reality. I read an article that said, “Negative thoughts shine the light on our own unconscious mind causing the enemy to create a new reality.” Negative emotions affect our organs and health. Anger weakens the liver and worry weakens the stomach. Stress weakens the heart and brain, while fear weakens the kidney. Weeds are not good for our mental and physical well-being.

Some of our weeds have grown for many years. I refer to those particular weeds as the aged weeds. Unlike fine wine that we drink, aged isn’t good and doesn’t taste good in this reference. These specific weeds have been left unattended and allowed to become deeply rooted. We’ve put on our invisible shield to the aged weeds. These weeds represent our past or memories that over the years, we’ve lost the energy, the fight, and the courage to pluck and throw away with our yard waste. However, the reality is that these particular weeds, the aged weeds are the mothership of all the other weeds.

Have you ever heard of cognitive distortions? Cognitive distortions are exaggerated or irrational thoughts that convince us of something that isn’t really true. These thoughts reinforce negative thinking. Out of the top five cognitive distortions thinking, all or nothing thinking is number one and disqualifying the positive is number four.

Let’s talk briefly about disqualifying the positive. An example, there was a man that was driving one night in the country when he experienced a flat tire. He pulled off the dark road, got out his truck, and surveyed his tire. He knew that he would need to walk to the nearest cabin, not knowing how far, he began his walk down the dark lonely road. As he was walking the dark road with his flashlight, he began thinking about all the possibilities that could happen to him while walking on the road. Like, an animal will come and attack him, or an animal would come out, and he would have to run for his life. Or, what if he never finds a house.

Eventually, he spotted a porch light in the distance, and as he was walking towards the light, he began telling himself that the person who lived in the cabin will be angry and irritated for the interruption by a complete stranger. As a matter of fact, the person will be a horrible person and will harm him. After all, this person is alone in the woods by himself and answering the door and inviting a total stranger into their home. Without even realizing it, he was knocking on the door. While he was waiting, he convinced himself this will be a horrible person. As the door opened and a man appeared. The man who knocked on the door instantly punched the person who opened the door and ran away. Again, disqualifying the positive will cause exaggerated or irrational thoughts that convinces us of something that isn’t true.

Another example, have you ever interview for a job in which you felt confident? How did you feel when you received the rejection? For a second, you begin to second guess yourself. When we experience a situation that doesn’t turn in our favor, we immediately internalized our personal flaws as negative by disqualifying the whole situation. We didn’t look at the entire situation to factor in any of the positives, we only feed the negatives. Positives such as meeting new people, improving our communication skills or the opportunity to better our interview skills. Now we know how to answer those questions that we stumbled on.

We tend to forget to glance in or mental rearview mirror to recognize all our accomplishments and achievements stacked together. While we’re driving a car, we occasionally look in the rearview mirror to prepare us for the road ahead and to switch lanes. This is the same for us mentally, we only need to glance at our past to prepare for our future and to adjust lanes, thought processes accordingly. Have you noticed that a car’s rearview mirror is much smaller than the windshield? Our past is actually smaller compared to the future. Our past is not as important as the future. Again, we need to only have a look in our mental rearview mirror for what’s ahead.

Now back to our thought garden. We need to start removing those weeds. The aged weeds, the mothership of weeds may need a different approach than plucking like the others because they are deeply rooted. With these particular weeds, we need to simply acknowledge them as they are, weeds that are all the negatives. Don’t feed them, just acknowledge them and move on to remove the others. As long as we acknowledge and leave and no longer feed them, over time, they will die. Similar to Roundup the weed killer, you acknowledge the weeds, spray the Roundup, leave it and eventually the weeds die.

Since we’ve removed the weeds and no longer feed the aged weeds, we need to rototill the soil to prepare the ground for our good harvest, the good yield. The benefits to till our garden are to break the soil, eliminate the weeds, and deliver nutrients deep into the ground. We need our land to be loose for our good seeds and plants to grow and spread; for them to be fruitful. We need to make our soil rich and plentiful.

Once we rototill our soil to make our soil deeply rich and plentiful, we need to replant the good yield that we’ve compartmentalized in the containers. Again, this is the self-love, self-compassion, encouragement, and acceptance. This is where we make the transformative transfer of all those perfect emotions and feelings into our restored and restructured thought garden, so they can be fruitful and plentiful. When we remove the good harvest from the containers, be sure to break up the bottom soil, so the roots can breathe life.

Now that we’ve finished our transformative transfer of all our perfect emotions and feelings, we need to acknowledge and feed them by nourishing with mindfulness and self-compassion. Mindfulness is a process of awareness for the present moment and an exploration of emotions and feelings without judgment. Mindfulness requires us to be able to pay attention to any experience or emotive feeling, positive or negative with acceptance and without attacking.

Self-compassion gives us the capacity to comfort and soothe ourselves and to motivate ourselves with encouragement. Most of us demonstrate compassion for a friend or loved one when they are experiencing tough times. But when we, ourselves experience tough times, we tend not to show ourselves the same level of compassion. We become critical and judgmental with destructive thoughts about ourselves. With self-compassion, we turn the compassion inward to support our own emotional development and acceptance. Basically, we use mindfulness to bring awareness and presence of our emotions without judgment, then combine self-compassion with supporting and comforting those emotions.

The final step of our transformative transfer is understanding. Understand there will be times when you see weeds sprout up next to our good yield. That’s because our seasons have changed, and the weed particles get caught in the wind of our changing season to land next to our good stuff hoping to deceive us into feeding it. We need to recognize when our season changes when that overcast approaches to survey our good harvest, so we can prepare. If you see a weed sprouting up, acknowledge it for what it is, no good and turn your focus to feed the good. A weed cannot plant its roots unless we allow it. I read a saying, “One who is full loathes honey from the comb, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet”.

I want to remind you that we didn’t begin with all these weeds, the negatives, we’ve allowed them to plant over time with our circumstances. Our thoughts are in our control, and no one can control it unless we allow it. We are the great master certified gardeners of our own mental garden, only us, no one else.

Aristotle said, “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” We cannot control our seasons or storms. However, we can control how we prepare and live through the seasons by controlling our thoughts. We are resilient, relentless. We are strong because we’ve made it through all those storms and horrid seasons. We are here now.

There was a story about a daughter who was sharing with her mother how hard life was going for her. She didn’t know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of the fighting and struggling. It seemed when one problem was solved, another would sprout up. Her mother listened and took her into the kitchen. The mother filled three pots with water and placed on high heat. When the pots came to a boil, she put carrots in one pot, eggs in another and coffee beans in the last one.

Around twenty minutes later, the mother turned off the burners and pulled out the carrots and placed them in the bowl. She then pulled out the eggs and put them in a separate bowl. She spooned out the coffee and placed it in another bowl. She turned to her daughter and asked, “What do you see?”. “Carrots, eggs and coffee,” the daughter said. The mother brought her closer and told her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. She then asked her to break the egg. After peeling off the shell, the daughter observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she stated it’s the rich aroma.

The daughter then asked her mother, “What does it mean?”. Her mother explained that each of the objects had faced the same adversity, boiling water. But each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected the liquid interior. But after sitting through the boiling water, its insides became hardened. The coffee beans were unique because after sitting in the boiling water, they changed the water. The mother turned to her daughter and asked,” Which one are you? When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean”?

What was the lessoned learned? Which one are we? When adversity comes knocking at our door, when the season’s change and the storms come, are we the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity do we wilt and become soft, lose our strength? Or are we the egg that starts with a pliable heart, but changes with the heat? Did we have a fluid spirit, but after a hardship become hardened and stiff? Does our shell look the same on the outside, but on the inside, we are bitter and tough? Or are we the coffee bean?

The coffee bean actually changes the hot water, the very same circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, the coffee beans releases the fragrance and flavor of our life. If we are like the bean, when things are at their worst, we get better and change the situation around us. When the hours are the darkest and trials are their highest, are we changed by our surroundings? Or do we bring life, flavor to them?

I always end my talks with action items. My action item is the mindfulness challenge, so we can become aware of our emotions and thoughts. The challenge is to think of goals, feed those goals. When we feel the presence of negative thoughts, I want you to practice the Pause exercise: Take a moment, to pause thoughts and actions with a focus on awareness. You are aware of the thoughts. Then move your hand on your chest and take a few deep breaths. Then acknowledge your thoughts and say, “May I love and accept myself just as I am? And then think of three positive thoughts. With this challenge, we can begin training ourselves to flip the script.

I want to end on a quote from Wilfred Arlan Peterson, “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives”. Let’s make the path we want.