Richard Hogan: Before you make a new year resolution, ask yourself, are you afraid to thrive?

Richard Hogan: We can keep thinking the same way or we can disrupt them and start to think differently. Picture: Moya Nolan

Well, we all survived another Christmas. As we look back on the year, reflecting on what we accomplished or where we fell short and as we start to think about looking forward into the new year, it is important to consider how we author our lives.

We rarely think that we are the authors of our life story, but there is nothing as important as that concept.

The story we tell ourselves about who we are and what we are capable of is the most important story we ever narrate. “I can’t” and “I can” are two equally correct statements. Think for a moment about the author of your life, sitting up there observing, making notes and telling the story of what they see. What if their view of the world was tainted as a child?

What if they were taught by flawed writers how to write? What if the world that was modelled for them was chaotic? What if their ability to perceive was damaged by experience? All these factors impact on our ability to narrate our life story.

We think thoughts are facts, and are correct. The clients I see generally come into the clinic, because they realise the way they are thinking is getting in the way of them flourishing in life.

We all have cognitive distortions running in our lives. That’s just a fact. Thoughts are like the smell in a house, you don’t realise they have gone off until someone walks in and tells you to open up the windows.

Most of our thoughts were thought a long time ago and all we are doing is running an old neural circuit loop. In short, thoughts are habits. And we can keep thinking the same way or we can disrupt them and start to think differently.

We all have a tendency to blindly miss truths about ourselves and selectively abstract some negative experience and come to view it as the whole experience.

These are cognitive distortions and they cause us a considerable amount of pain, because they inform how we story our lives.

Cognitive distortions are internal mental filters or biases that increase our misery, low mood or depression because they help to make us feel negative about ourselves.

Our brain has an incomprehensibly complicated task to perform. Even now as you read this, the surrounding of where you are is being distilled out, the words on this page are being brought to your attention, you don’t see your fingers holding the paper, or the phone, or the laptop, the floor or table behind it, well maybe it is coming into view now because I have mentioned it and your brain has started to filter other things due to the prompt.

Think about this for a moment, what happens when you tie your shoes? Do you see the stitching on your runners? The decorative tiles your foot is standing on?

Generally, the answer would be, no. Because your brain is filtering out unnecessary data so you can concentrate on the lace and tying the loop.

This process of filtering is an essential one for your brain to function, but it isn’t always an accurate process and often leads us into suffering. The brain needs to take these shortcuts to be able to function in the complexity and multitudinous of our worlds.

If our brain processed accurately all the detail and data it was receiving in any given situation, you would be overwhelmed and unable to function. So, we need this filtering process to help us to manage everything that is going on around us. But it isn’t always accurate because it filters out things we are not familiar with and keeps us thinking the same way.

The brain thinks, “Well these thoughts haven’t got you killed so there is value to them, keep thinking them”.

And while you haven’t died thinking these thoughts, they might not be allowing you to thrive in your life.

I often meet people, this time of year who want to change aspects of their life, they come into the clinic full of enthusiasm for the year ahead but very quickly fall back on old habits, and they feel powerless and by February they feel hopeless.

That is because they haven’t changed their thinking habits.

Two of the most important questions you can ask yourself before you launch out on a new year resolution is, “Am I afraid to thrive?” and “What would thriving look like?”

People generally want to change, but don’t realise that you first of all must examine how you think and why you think a certain way.

Good physical health takes intentional action, you don’t find yourself out running thinking, “Wow, how come I’m running?” You were intentional in that action.

Good mental health takes intentional action too. We can think in old negative patterns or we can decide to think in healthier patterns, but it takes intentional action on your part.

For the next week, write down three ideas about yourself that you would like to say about yourself, and during the day look for three examples of one of those positive ideas.

You are now priming the brain to be more positive in its outlook.

You were not born with negative ideas about who you are, you were taught those over the years and they became a part of your story.

It’s time to reauthor that story.