The adage of ‘You are stronger than you think ‘ has crossed many tongues and far to many inspiration posts & images.
It implies that we unaware of your own strength inside ourselves yet it does touch upon the fact that we, generally speaking, make things in our heads way worse than they are in reality.
It is good to highlight we have a reserve of strength to endure absolutely anything and come out the other side but seems to indicate that internal strength or willpower, whatever you want to call it can overcome ours thoughts and beliefs.
I’d argue the reverse.
We need to think stronger than we are, rather than being stronger than we think.
How can someone think stronger?
It all starts with our beliefs, most of which are unconscious.
Some great questions to get going are:
- What do you believe about yourself?
- How would you define yourself?
- What beliefs do you have about yourself?
- What do you believe about how life should be?
Of those questions, are any of them are self limiting?
If I believe that life is cruel, my thinking is geared for cruelty and I look for reinforcement of that belief.
If I believe that I’m a procrastinator who can’t publish posts consistently. Pop! In comes a new belief looking to get reinforced.
All of these are limiting to what I think about myself which I (perhaps unconsciously) believe.
Omar Itani has a great post diving into belief which is has the quote I’ve nicked:
What we think determines how we feel which determines how we act.
So if life is cruel, I’ll feel that way and act accordingly to a cruel world. Which would looks and sounds something like
“I can’t do anything to change my life because you can’t change a cruel world, let me look up something negative to reinforce my belief”
And around and around it goes in reinforcement cycle of a limiting belief.
We must exercise the muscle of questioning our beliefs and our thoughts.
Orson Scott Card also had this amazing quote:
“We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question”
To think stronger we must question ourselves and coach ourselves through our own lives.
Self Coaching Questions
Some great self coaching questions to think stronger are:
- What would I have to believe for this to be true?
- What advice would I give someone in the exact same situation as me?
- Is this the only way of looking at it?
- What would I do if could not fail?
- What assumption am I making?
- What am I not seeing or acknowledging?
- What could be a more empowering belief?
- What (or who) do I need to start saying no too?
- Who am I still angry at? How do I need to forgive?
To flex this muscle we must adopt an identity that we can call upon to guide us, what would ‘X’ do if you will and begin with thinking like that X.
We must be curious about ourselves and what we believe, lest they limit us from our full potential.