Focus Friday: Let’s Focus on Catching Your Thoughts

For several years now, I’ve been working on catching my thoughts, inspired by 2 Corinthians 10:5 (see it written out at the end of this post). Some days I do it well, and other days I fail miserably.

I’ve learned that how I’m feeling is largely determined by the thoughts I’m allowing to stay in my mind. My mood is good when I’m thinking helpful, positive thoughts. My mood suffers when I let negative thoughts take over my brain.

Therapists who use cognitive behavioral therapy call these unhelpful thoughts “cognitive distortions.” Cognitive is basically a fancy word for thinking.

Distorted thinking can lead to negative emotions and is a contributing factor to mental illnesses like depression and anxiety.

The thoughts we need to catch are usually lies we’re telling ourselves. We over-generalize, or we catastrophize, or we filter our experiences through a negative lens. We need to catch those lies and replace them with God’s truth instead.

To help all of us, I decided to create a special calendar. Each month focuses on a different type of thought distortion and gives you an example from my own negative thinking. Then I give you a more helpful thought to consider. There’s room for you to write down your own negative thoughts and then come up with a better thought to replace it.

Here’s an image of the front cover of the “2023 Catch Your Thoughts Calendar.”

I want to make it available to anyone who’d like a copy. It’s a pdf file you can download and print off. You’ll have two pages for each month. One page has room to keep track of things you want to do, plus the space to work on a certain cognitive distortion. The other page has a calendar for the month where you can write in appointments and events, plus a spot to list monthly goals and important events.

And here’s where I continue to practice catching my thoughts.

I spent lots of time today finishing up the calendar, but I’m not sure how to make it available on my website yet. I want it to be a free resource people can download when they sign up for my email list, but I’ve never done this before. It’s going to take a little more work and maybe some trial and error.

My brain jumps around to lots of negative thoughts:

You don’t know what you’re doing! You should have figured this out before you told people about it! They’re probably going to think it’s stupid and nobody will want it. You can’t even catch your own thoughts, why would anyone listen to you?

And that, my friends, is why I need this calendar. Those are all lies that make me feel terrible if I keep thinking them.

Instead, I need to catch them and turn them around:

I don’t know what I’m doing, but I can figure it out. Sure, I may be jumping the gun a bit, but I’m excited to share this resource with people. Some people might not be interested, but I’m sure many people will see the value in it and it will help them. I’m still learning to catch my thoughts, and that’s why people can listen to me and learn along with me.

I feel better already.

If you’d like a copy of this calendar and I haven’t added a button or link for it somewhere when you’re reading this, just email me at robyn@robynmulder.com and I’ll sign you up for my email list and send you a copy.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV)

Are you good at catching your thoughts? How can focusing on God help you recognize the lies you may be thinking and replace them with his truth instead?