thought on Habits

We sow a thought and reap an act; We sow an act and reap a habit; We sow a habit and reap a character; We sow a character and reap a destiny.

What Determines Happiness?  Imagine a movie theater full of a hundred people. These hundred individuals represent the full continuum of happiness: Some are exceptionally happy, others less so, and ...

I began to see a pattern at work in many of us. Our emotions were leading us to thoughts, and those thoughts were dictating our decisions, and our decisions were determining behaviors, and then the be...

A remarkable aspect of your mental life is that you are rarely stumped.

In recent years, an entire discipline of modern psychology has developed called cognitive behavioral therapy. This breakthrough teaching reveals that many problems, from eating disorders to relational...

Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.

One thing is certain: if you don’t shape your life, it will be shaped for you. And to shape your life, you need to know how to shape your mind—you need mind-management.

Our lives are always moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts. What we think shapes who we are.

When we have the same thought again, the line of the original thought is deepened, causing what's called a memory trace. With each repetition the trace goes deeper and deeper, forming and embeddin...

Many of us tend to be passive with our thoughts and feelings. We treat them like they rule us, like they are in charge of us, and not the other way around. We forget that our thoughts and feelings are...

Too often we give real estate to things in our lives that either haven’t earned their land or were never meant to occupy important space in the first place.

The desert saints said that the beginning of renouncing a thought is simply noticing it. That is part of what I’m doing in my quarter hours—I am noticing, and naming, and then, for a few minutes, quar...

Mind-management is a skill that needs to be learned and constantly upgraded as we grow from childhood into adulthood. For every new experience we need a new set of mind-management tools.

God's Word must be so strongly fixed in our minds that it becomes the dominant influence in our thoughts, our attitudes, and our actions. One of the most effective ways of influencing our minds is...

The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act.

The insight that we can exercise some control over our thoughts and feelings is deep in Christianity.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

The average person has more than thirty thousand thoughts per day. Of those, so many are negative that “according to researchers, the vast majority of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct r...

It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.

But it’s not so simple, that sort of “quiet hour”. It has to be learned. A lot of unimportant inner litter and bits and pieces have to be swept out first. Even a small head can be piled high inside wi...

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Worldviews are like belly buttons. Everyone has one, but we don’t talk about them very often. Or perhaps it would be better to say that worldviews are like cerebellums: everyone has one and we can’t l...

The great irony of our time is that even as we are living longer, we are thinking shorter.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

My thought it is a wanton ranger,  It skips away;  I fear 'twill bring my soul in danger  On Judgment Day...

Did you know that more has been discovered about our minds in the last twenty years than in all the time before that? Did you know that an estimated 60 to 80 percent of visits to primary care physicia...

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

In the first chapter of her book, Get Out of Your Head , author Jennie Allen shares a vulnerable and honest moment from her own life about just how hard it can be to focus in a world of distraction...

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.