Life Coaching: Backward Thinking and Self Talk
/“No one, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62
I have a friend whose father drives an tractor on a large farm. Someone once asked him how he kept his rows so straight. “Easy,” he said. “I don’t look behind me.” True story. I only wish our lives were like that.
How many times have we failed? Hoe many times have we beaten ourselves up over those failures? If we were to count the number of times we have actually failed versus the number to times our brain reminds us of said failures, the scale would tip over. We can have wonderful successes, yet our brain focuses on that failed marriage, failed finance, failed business, failed relationship, failed advice, failed choice—failed, failed, failed! See what I did there? Our brains are like a perpetual motion machine—never ceasing to carp relentlessly at our spirits until we give up trying.
Jesua spoke the words quoted in Luke 9. He wasn’t playing around, either. Throughout Scripture, we are encouraged (even commanded) to trust God and stop Monday morning quarterbacking ourselves to death when we get defeated. We are gonna get defeated sometimes. We are gonna make mistakes, and yes, we are gonna fail. We are human. It happens. Now…what are we gonna do about it? Are we gonna continually pick ourselves apart, like a crow pecking at a French fry? Or are we gonna set our spirits toward the One True Spirit and let Gid pull us out of that cycle of toxic self talk? Which will it be?
If I talked to a friend like I talk to myself, they would slap the everloving bejeebers out of me! And I would deserve it. We don’t talk to our friends and family like we talk to ourselves because we love them. Maybe therein lies the rib…maybe we don’t love ourselves enough. Oh, we’re good enough at self preservation, but when it comes right down to it, we treat ourselves terribly because we are looking back! We are putting our hands to the plow and breaking our necks to see the rear view. Maybe that’s why there is a sign on the rear view mirror that reads “objects may be closer than they appear.” Those objects (or failures) are never further away than our next thought, unfortunately, unless we focus on renewing our minds. Even then, those pesky little thought criminals assault us in unexpected and toxic ways. We have to stop that, but how?
The most important thing we can do is to stop the thought when it first tears it’s ugly head. Yes, we need memorial markers in our lives so we don’t repeat past mistakes, but taking 30 lashes from these evil mind invaders doesn’t qualify. But it’s not enough to stop the thought. That doesn’t work by itself. We have to replace the lie with truth. So what is truth? Here are a few examples…
Maybe you had a failure of epic proportions in your past. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have another one in your future. People DO actually learn from their mistakes, and with Gods help, overcome them.
Failure in one area does not equal failure in all. Just because you made a financial mistake doesn’t mean your marriage will fail too. Couples have survived worse and so can you.
Failure is something that happened to you. It is not who you are. Unless your parents actually named you “Failure” if that’s the case, go to court and change your name. You are not a failure because of a bad decision.
Everyone has had a failure in their life at one time or another. You are not alone.
Unless we’re looking back at the past in order to propel us forward, then we have no business looking at it. We aren’t going that way.
God bless. Maranatha!
