How to Create Feel Good Thoughts

By Cheryl Wilson-Stewart | March 24, 2021 | Comments 1 comment

You can create feel-good thoughts. Thoughts that actually rewire your brain and flood your body with feel good chemicals.

Here’s something to think about. Every time you have a thought – and it’s estimated that between 60,000 – 70,000 thoughts ricochet through your mind every day – your brain pumps out chemicals that reflect the way the thought makes you feel.

It happens instantaneously.

If you have a sad, overwhelming, or hopeless thought your brain pumps out a dose of chemicals that correspond to that thought and make you feel not so good. On the other hand, if you have a happy, loving or encouraging thought your brain gives you a blissful hit of feel-good chemicals.

So, it seems if YOU want to feel good, you should consciously fill your head with good, hopeful thoughts. Easier said than done. Most of us have little or no control over our thoughts, they just seem to ‘pop’ in and out automatically. Some ‘pop’ in over and over and become the loudest voices in our heads.

Same old, same old

The irony is that most of these loud thoughts are often the same ones we had yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. These habitual thoughts tend to be overwhelmingly……negative. They move in, take over and steal our joy. The worst part is that these thoughts are forceful and repetitive and they’re actually (re)wiring our brain. The cycle of negative persistent thought continues.

Ask yourself this…. Would I want me as a friend?

Isn’t it interesting that few of us enjoy the company of people who are negative? Yet many of us tolerate this self-limiting babble that goes on within our own minds?

We become immune.

We become so used to the stream of negative and critical thoughts that we are often unaware of the impact in our lives. It’s when we start paying careful attention to our thoughts that we’re surprised at the persistent negativity we find in there.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

You don’t have to suffer from anxiety as I did for most of my life to know how trapped you can become by your own negative thoughts. How they can color every minute of every day. Not to mention how they can change you into someone you’re not. My thoughts were like a forceful dictator forcing me to fall in line and keeping me trapped in loops of negativity. That was until I could break them. Therein lies the problem. Those thoughts hang on with a tenacity that is i-n-t-e-n-s-e. Breaking the loops was beyond difficult. I tried all the tradition approaches therapy, exercise, affirmations, journaling, meditation I wandered into the alternative with chanting, humming, sound therapy all with limited success. It wasn’t until I accidentally stumbled on the journaling method in OH MY Word that I found the catalyst for gaining control of my thoughts, and then my life.

The Happy Accident

I was writing quotes I found meaningful on index cards and tacking them up on my bulletin board. One day instead of the writing the quote I wrote the word from the quote that resonated with me the word was JOY. Oh, how I wanted joy in my life. It’s the thing that anxiety and persistent negative thought wrestles from you. After I’d written JOY on my card I coloured and glittered it within an inch of its life! It felt good. BUT the interesting thing was as the day went on JOY came back to me over and over and each time, I felt all those good feeling all over again. A few days later I tried it again with a different word and had the same experience. A simple process (considering what I’d tried) and yet it seemed to allow me to choose the thought I wanted to think and feel good.

This was my card from 8 years ago. Yes! It’s been that long.

I won’t go into the rest of the story but suffice to say I started choosing how I wanted to feel and choose an intention every day and over time I slowly changed into the person I wanted to be thinking the thoughts I wanted to think. I finally had a tool to manage my anxiety and the negative thought that held me hostage.

Even if you have never identified as having anxiety this past year has challenged the mental health of all of us. Thoughts of despair, hopelessness, fear, worry have strong armed their way in and overwhelmed the most positive of thoughts. Some of us were dealing with a generalized negative feelings and stress for the first time.

But remember they are just thoughts and thoughts can be changed.

We can consciously choose the thought, we want to think and initiate a process that allows us to create what scientist call a ‘thought interruption’ whereby we replace negative thoughts with positive empowering ones.

Spring clean your thoughts

It takes 5 minutes.

Do it in the morning to set the tone for my whole day.

Get quiet.

Ask yourself one of these questions. How do I want to feel? What quality do I need today? Who do I want to be?

Don’t over think this. Simply wait for the word. Accept the first one that comes to mind.

Draw, print, write or doodle it on the page and colour it.

Done. Carry on with your day.

You’ll be reminded of your word as the day goes on. You’ll see it. Feel the feeling associated with it. And with a little bit of practice, you’ll be seeing evidence of your word in your day.

Spring Cleaning

Think of this as a spring cleaning of your thoughts. A refresh so to speak.

Sweeping old negative habitual thoughts out and replacing them with thoughts you want to think.

One word at a time.

Happy spring.

May it be a time of awaking, renewal, rebirth a blossoming of new thought and new life.

Cheryl x

If you don’t have an Oh My Word journal yet you can get one here.

Don’t have an Oh, My Word journal yet? You can get yours here.