Thoughts are powerful.
Words are powerful too.
In case you forgot, this is your reminder.
As I continue to grow and experience life, one thing I know for sure is that words usually begin long before they leave our mouths. Before we say anything out loud, we have already rehearsed it somewhere in our minds. Before we speak words of confidence, fear, doubt, hope, encouragement or criticism, a thought has usually been sitting quietly in the background shaping what eventually comes out.
One thing I have learned over the years is that not every thought deserves a microphone. We all have hundreds of thoughts passing through our minds every day. Some are hopeful. Some are fearful. Some are kind. Others can be surprisingly cruel, especially when they are directed at ourselves.
The funny thing is that thoughts rarely stay thoughts for long. Give them enough time and they begin to appear in our words. The things we repeatedly tell ourselves eventually find their way into conversations, decisions, and the stories we build about our lives.
I have also noticed that people rarely pay attention to the thoughts going through their minds. We notice what we say out loud, but we forget what we have been rehearsing internally for weeks, months or even years.
A person who constantly thinks, “I’m not good enough,” may never say those exact words out loud. Yet somehow those thoughts begin showing up everywhere. They hesitate before trying something new. They stay silent when they have something valuable to contribute. They talk themselves out of opportunities before they even begin.
The opposite is true too. A single encouraging thought repeated often enough can completely change the direction of a person’s life.
I think about the story of J.K. Rowling before she became a household name. At one point in her life, she was a single mother living in a tiny, unheated apartment, surviving on government assistance. She was facing a heavy wave of deep disappointments. Her mother had passed away, her marriage had ended, and she was completely broke. By all external measures, her physical reality was incredibly dark.
Yet, her internal thoughts were shockingly powerful. She fiercely held onto the belief that the story she was writing on scraps of paper mattered. Even when twelve different book publishers rejected her manuscript and essentially told her she wasn’t good enough, her internal rehearsal was filled with persistence rather than defeat. She kept showing up for her dream because the story she chose to believe inside her mind was entirely different from the bleak room she was sitting in. Eventually, that internal focus completely rewrote her physical world.
We don’t have to look at famous figures to see this truth in action, though. I think about this whenever I remember moments from my own life where my thoughts did affect my reality in a positive or negative way.
Often, it was the story I had already created in my mind before anything happened. The thought came first. The words followed. The decision came after.
Maybe that is why we should be more careful with both.
Thoughts are powerful.
Words are powerful too.
A careless sentence can stay with someone for years. An encouraging one can do the same. A thought repeated often enough can become a belief. A belief repeated often enough can become the way we live.
Which means what we allow to grow in our minds matters more than we realize.
Because every word begins as a thought.
And every life is shaped, little by little, by the stories we choose to believe.
With Stories Always
Yhem 💕
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