Keep a Thought Diary

It might seem like a strange purpose for a diary, but writing down repetitive thoughts in a diary is a great way to discover the underlying beliefs that are influencing your life. If you can change harmful beliefs about yourself and the world, you can change your thoughts about yourself and the world. Our thoughts influence our emotions and our actions and in a mystical way they seem to affect the opportunities that come into our lives and the ways in which people respond to us.

Another benefit of a thought diary is that you can monitor how your thoughts are changing over time. As negative thinking decreases, you can reprogram your mind with positive thoughts about yourself and your life. Your diary should increasingly reflect positive thoughts. As time goes on, you should also be able to recognize positive changes in your life to match your transformed thinking patterns.

The thoughts you need to record in your diary are not deliberate thoughts such as affirmations, but repetitive thoughts that intrude unasked for at different times of the day. For example, you may be driving and for no reason a thought will come into your mind such as "I am a failure." This thought comes from an underlying belief and will affect how you feel and act. This is just an example, your thoughts might be different entirely. Whatever they are, write them down. Then take some time to look for patterns over time. The thoughts that come most often are the ones you need to focus on. Ask the question: "What does this mean?" or start a sentence off with "This means" and see what comes to your mind. You need to start digging deep in an effort to discover the beliefs that you hold that are limiting your life. This can be difficult emotionally but well worthwhile when you get to the bottom of what is driving you.

If you change your thoughts, you can change your life. The first step to doing this is to understand what your thoughts actually are, and the beliefs that underlie them. A thought diary makes this process easy and provides a permanent record that can help you track the changes in your life.