“IF YOU LISTEN TO ANY THOUGHT LONG ENOUGH, IT BECOMES A PART OF YOUR PERSONAL PLAYLIST.” Jon Acuff
I am in a book club, and this month, our book was Soundtracks by Jon Acuff. At first, I thought this guy is crazy, what is he talking about, a soundtrack in your head? I hear nothing! I have been practicing meditation for over a decade, I value my quiet mind, haha! As I continued reading the book, then listening to it on Audible, I learned several things:
- The average person has over 60,000 thoughts a day, and we are only conscious of about 10%! What happens to the rest of those thoughts? They’re just swirling around in our heads, undetected by us, and influencing everything we do. Hmm, that’s the opposite of being a mindful person…read on.
- The first step in finding out what your soundtrack is happens to be awareness. Just start becoming aware of your thoughts about something. I had a thought this morning around how hot I was feeling, so I opened the window, then I got cold, so I asked my husband to turn on the fireplace. I caught myself thinking, “Can’t I just get comfortable? Why do I get overheated one minute, then cold the next?” etc… BAM! these are not thoughts that are serving my highest good or something better!
- Onto step 2 turn down the volume on the thoughts that aren’t serving you and flip the script! So, I changed my thoughts to “Wow, isn’t it great that I live in a house where I can open the windows? And I really love my electric fireplace and how sweet is my husband for reaching over to turn it on for me? Wow, I am so lucky”
- Step 3, keep doing this throughout your day, keep your scientist’s lab coat on and see if you can start flipping your internal script. I have had such a great week, that’s not to say I didn’t have disasters happen…just today my car window kept going past where it was supposed to stop and crashed into the top of the door, Jim’s truck floor filled up with water on my side, and a myriad of other things happened. And I was able to let all of this roll off my back because I had so many wins this past week, they do add up!
To build on this, I was in a conference this week, and Corinne Crabtree presented the 4 Phases of Change:
Phase 1: 20/80 = Wake Up: 20% of the time you’ll start to be aware of your thoughts
Phase 2: 40/60 = Building: 40% of the time you start building new thoughts
Phase 3: 60/40 = Make or Break: 60% of the time you are now thinking these new thoughts
Phase 4: 80/20 = Habit: if you are thinking your new thoughts 80% of the time, you have formed a new Soundtrack!
Jon Acuff also has a 30-day challenge: It’s called The New Anthem and it’s kind of a starter kit for new thoughts. The premise is, you start filling your brain with these new thoughts and see how things go during his 30-day challenge. This is one of the ways he suggests you gather evidence that you can change your soundtrack.
As an experiment, I challenge you to listen to your thoughts today, what are they secretly saying when you’re not listening? Can you turn the volume down on some of those thoughts and crank up the volume on some new thoughts? I’d love to hear how your experiment goes, my hypothesis is that you might be surprised!
