Your Thoughts Are Your Fuel for Feeling.
You, who try the hearts and emotions and thinking powers, are a righteous God. (Psalms 7:9)
Emotions and thoughts are intimately linked to each other. The power of thoughts need to be understood first in order to learn how to manage our emotions. Here this passage introduces Mark as an example to explain why your thoughts are your fuel for feeling? You need to reflect yourself to see whether you have similar thoughts as Mark always does and you really need to make action to carry out changes if you want to really change into a better self.
Relevant statistics shows that although thousands of people make decisions at the first of the year to start exercising and they go pay money to sign up at a gym, only 16 percent of them actually show up and follow through. This is a perfect example of a situation where a person wanted to do something, made a decision to do it, and then allowed his thoughts and feelings to become a dicator in his life. God has given us free will, and the truth is that our thoughts and feelings cannot rule us if we don’t let them, but most people don’t know that.
One day in December, Mark looked at himself in the mirror after taking a shower and thought, “I’ve gained weight over the past couple of years and I’m out of shape. I really need to do something. But the holidays are coming, so I guess I’ll just enjoy eating whatever I want until January. Then I’ll start on a diet and exercise progam.” Mark felt good about his decision and wanted to make a commitment so he went by the gym the next day and signed up. He gave a credit card number at the desk and agreed to pay $ 45 a month for the next year so he could use the facility. Mark left the gym feeling good about his decision.
He enjoyed eating all he wanted over the holidays and kept telling himself and other people that in January he was going on a diet-and-exercise program. January came, the holidays were over, and he woke up on the first Monday of the month and told himself, I will go to the gym today. He headed off to work and even took gym clothes and tennis shoes with him. At work that day he was invited to go to lunch and it happened to be his favorite restaurant. He thought, “This is going to be hard because they have that lasagna I love, and that sure doesn’t fit into my diet plan. “. It never occurred to Mark to just turn down the invitation if he felt he could not go there and stay on his diet. He just assumed that the temptation would be too much, and in reality, had already planned for failure.
The first mistake that Mark made was thinking that resisting the temptation to eat lasagna was going to be too hard for him to do. He could have thought, “I want to go to lunch with my friends, but I am going to stay on my diet. I can do it! I love their lasagna, but I can say no to it.” You see, our thoughts prepare us for action, and since Mark had already thought it would be hard for him, when he got into the restaurant and started staring at the lasagna on the menu, he could not resist the temptation because he had already decided mentally what he would do. His feelings hooked up with his thoughts, and the two of them together made his decision for him.
All the carbonhydrates in the lasagna made Mark sleepy that afternoon. “Maybe I’ll wait and start exercising later this week. After all, I already messed up by eating the lasagna, and I am really tired today anyway.” Of course his feelings agreed with the plan to go home and rest. They assured him that they did not feel like exercising, and waiting until another day sounded wonderful.
April rolled around, and Mark still had not gone on a diet or started exercising. He tried a few times, but his thoughts and feelings always defeated him. The gym had charged his credit card each month as promised, and he had paid out $180 for something he wasn’t using. When he thought about it, he felt guilty, but his mind offered some excuses: “I tried to exercise, but I just have too much going on in my life. I really would like to take better care of my life, but I don’t have time. I have a lot of responsibility, but things will change eventually and I will get around to it.” He wished he had not signed that contract because now he was going to waste $540.
Each one of the thousands of people who sign up at a gym in January and never show up, go through some version of Mark’s story. They let their thoughts and feelings control their decisions. They could have been successful in disciplining themselves if they had understood the power of thoughts and known they had the authority to choose their thoughts than just going with whatever happened to come to mind.
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