Before You Believe That Thought, Ask: Is It Actually True?

(Transcript edited for clarity.)

Hi, I'm Wes. Welcome to Before You Believe That Thought, Ask, Is It Actually True?

An alternative title is Don't Believe Every Thought You Think.

This is Your Life Systems, and today we're going to talk about something that I've found has hurt me in a lot of areas where I was trying to reach success in the past, but has also helped me immensely as I've learned to examine the thoughts that come into my mind before I act on them.

So again: Before You Believe That Thought, Ask, Is It Actually True?

Here's the question for today. If you'll keep this question in mind as we go through this episode, it will help you get the most out of it.

Whenever you have a thought, particularly when you're thinking about the next step or something you're planning to do for business or success in your life, or anything important you're working toward, ask: Is this thought true, or is it simply the first thing my mind gave me?

Here's the danger I've learned in my life about thoughts.

I've tried to train myself to provide the correct thought process.

It's a type of system for me that I've tried to intentionally create over many, many years.

Any time I'm working on business, one of my businesses, writing a book, or working on success in some other area of my life, I've tried to intentionally train my mind to provide the best thought and the best thinking process every time.

That's great when it works.

When it works well, when the thought is the right thought or the thinking process is the right thinking process, it's helpful.

It saves time.

It helps me take action quicker.

It helps me be decisive.

But every once in a while, a thought will come in and it's not correct after I examine it.

So I've trained myself in particular ways to think, and I've trained myself to quickly act on those thoughts, the things I've trained my mind to think about.

But I've also had that cause me to go way off on the wrong track.

My brain will give me a thought, or I'll think through something and something will come up, and I'll instantly act on it because I want to be decisive.

Then later, I find that I should have examined that thought a little deeper before taking massive action.

So often on these Your Life Systems episodes, when we're talking about systems and success and things like that, I talk about action.

Nothing happens until you take action and are decisive.

That's how you accomplish a lot.

A lot of things you want to accomplish in your life, a lot of success, and a lot of good systems are built on taking decisive action.

But occasionally, that decisive action wastes a lot of time and effort and sometimes leads you the wrong way.

That's why this is so important.

Sometimes you need to examine a thought or learn which thoughts are correct and which ones might need to be examined a little deeper.

That's also a trained process that takes a lot of time.

I'm not perfect at it now, but I'm a lot better than I used to be.

Every time I've had a thought that didn't end up being right, I've tried to go back and study: Why did I have that thought? Why is my thinking this way?

I've tried to train myself to start looking for clues.

I can't call it an alarm bell, but often when I have a thought now that might not be just right, there's a little thing in my mind, kind of like an alarm bell, that tells me, "Stop for a second and think about this."

Let's examine this thought before we take massive action.

Many times now, I save myself a lot of failure or struggle because of that little voice saying, "This thought might not be complete."

I've learned to listen to that and take a second to re-examine it.

A thought can feel true without being true.

Our minds are extremely powerful.

Usually, if we're intentionally training our minds for certain things, like I try to do and like when I talk about building success systems, that's basically what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about training our minds to reach success.

That can be very helpful.

When we make sure those processes and systems we put in place are actually leading to the correct thoughts, then they're true thoughts.

That's what I mean when I say a thought can feel true.

But sometimes it can feel true even if it's not true.

That can come from many different reasons.

It can come from fear, habit, emotion, old experiences, or something you've heard so many times that it feels like a fact.

I'm going to give you a really deep example from my life.

I've always been in church.

I was raised in church.

I'm still in church.

That's an important part of my life, even though that's not what this is about.

But this is a good example if you know anything about church.

I was raised in an old country church.

It was a non-denominational church, not that that really matters.

We used the King James Version of the Bible.

As I was growing up, I was taught things in church, or everybody in the church believed certain ways.

So I just automatically believed the same way.

Then as I got older, when I got into my 20s, I started questioning things.

I eventually started questioning some of the things that I automatically believed.

If you believe something, the thoughts come into your mind as you're thinking along those lines.

I found that most of the things I accepted or was taught were true.

But I also found that once I started digging into the reference, which was the Bible, and started researching some of these things, there were a few things I thought were true that were not backed up by the Bible.

What I found was that I hadn't been intentionally misled by anyone in this area.

But instead of people digging into the documentation, in this case the Bible, they were accepting what had been taught or seen.

In a business problem, the documentation can be many other things.

In a life problem, it can be other things.

The point is that instead of digging into the research material and finding the real facts, I was blindly accepting what I'd been taught or what I'd seen.

Once I started digging in and researching myself, I was able to change the thoughts.

So this leads to a couple different things.

One: thinking for yourself includes questioning your own thinking.

Often I'll talk about not believing anyone else just because they say something is true.

Don't believe it just because everybody's doing the same thing.

Think for yourself.

But sometimes you have to take that a step further, and you have to start questioning your own thinking.

That's very, very challenging.

It's challenging for everyone.

I deal mostly with entrepreneurs and people who are trying to achieve some level of success, whether it's in their life or business or whatever.

I've found that most people with the same thinking processes I have, which are the people I end up working with, consulting with, and helping, are pretty secure in a set of beliefs about whatever they're working on.

If one of those thoughts we're basing everything else around is not correct, it can be extremely valuable to identify it and correct it.

But it can also be very difficult to let go of something we believe.

We believe it in our heart and in our mind, even if it's incorrect.

So it can be challenging.

Some people are better at accepting it, correcting it, and moving on than others.

I'm not judging you.

I don't know you.

I know there have been a few times in my life when I've had a very difficult time letting go of something I was sure was true.

However, I've also trained myself that I want the truth, and that's more important to me than being right.

So if you think I'm wrong, show me.

Prove to me that I'm wrong.

That goes for my own thought processes too.

Once I find factual evidence that I had a thought or belief wrong, I correct it because I want to know the truth.

I want to operate on truth because, with the success I want to achieve, lies are not helping me achieve that.

I have to face the facts or understand the facts fully if I want to get the most out of what I'm working on.

So here's a question you can ask yourself if you're operating on thoughts, or thoughts come into your mind that you're not super comfortable with:

What evidence do I have that this is actually true?

Then take the time to back it up with evidence.

On the things you work on all the time, you only have to do this once.

You only have to figure out whether it's actually true one time, and then you don't have to worry about it again.

Here's why this is so valuable.

When you go through this process, you're replacing weak thinking with accurate thinking.

That's what you need if you want to achieve your biggest goals, build the best systems, and have more success.

You want accurate thinking.

Any thought that's not correct is weak thinking, and it can lead you off on the wrong path.

It can hurt you.

It can hurt your success, your business, and your goals.

If you want to achieve the most and achieve it as quickly as possible, you have to do what I eventually learned: always seek the most accurate thinking possible.

You need to examine things and test them, keep what is useful and true, and replace everything that's not.

You can think a thought without letting that thought make your decisions.

Remember, I said I've trained myself to think in a certain way about business and success, and that's great when my thinking is clear and I have the right thought process.

But I also had to learn that every thought that came into my mind was not necessarily the correct thought to make a decision.

That's why I said you can think a thought without letting that thought make your decisions.

So, back to the question:

Is this thought true, or is it simply the first thing my mind gave me?

It's going to take you some time.

But if you work on that today and this week, you can hopefully refine your thoughts, work on more accurate thinking, and that's going to make you more successful.

This was Your Life Systems.

Please like and subscribe.

Good luck.

I'll see you on the next episode.

What's Next?

·        Notice one thought that's influencing an important decision.

·        Ask whether it's true or simply the first answer your mind produced.

·        Write down the evidence that supports the thought.

·        Look for evidence that challenges or complicates it.

·        Delay major action when the thought still feels incomplete.

·        Keep the thinking that holds up and replace what doesn't.

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