There is a powerful affect that repeating a phrase or statement can have on your mind.
In my household, I have zero tolerance for the word hate. I will not allow any of my children to use that word as far as speaking to each other or to me. If any of my kids says “I hate you,” whether to me or to each other, they have to write one thousand sentences along with a few other punishments. They also have to number each sentence and write out the entire sentence on each line rather than the first word down the page, the second word, etc. That is the idea: to imprint the sentence it into their minds. My oldest teenager, who is almost 19, has only said this one time in her life. She said it once when she was 14, and because she hated writing the sentences and being grounded, she never said it again.
I saw an interesting phenomenon when my son had to do this. He said it for the first time recently to his sister, so he had to write “I love my sister” one thousand times. This happened on a weekend, and after a long time he finally finished the sentences. When he brought them to me, he told me that he had even started dreaming about them. Then a while after that, he was angry at his other sister (not the one he had to write the sentences about) and instead of saying, “I hate you” he actually said, “You are not my favorite sister of my younger two sisters.” So, he actually said something positive in anger about the very sister had previously said he hated without even thinking. This really shows how our minds work. The impact of his writing something a thousand times became so strong that first he was dreaming about it and later it affected the way he spoke naturally.
Think of how you could apply this same technique to affect your thinking. What could you say or write a thousand times that could change the way you think? This could be a great way to keep yourself motivated and interested in pursuing your goals. What is something that is very important to you? Providing for your family? Having a better life? Think of a phrase that you could write down or even say a thousand times that could affect the way that you see life, yourself, or your opportunity to have a success. For example, “I love having the opportunity to make more money and have a better life.” How might that affect your thinking if you were to say or write that 1,000 times? How about, “I love learning something new that gives me the opportunity to make a better life and provide for my family.” You could be even more specific than that. If you love the ocean and your dream is to go on a trip and go scuba diving to see live sea animals up close, then make a sentence out of that. For example, “I love having the opportunity to see ocean animals up close and taking pictures of them.”
Think how it could impact your thinking if you repeated this a thousand times. If you said or wrote that sentence three times a day for a year, that would be a thousand times. If you said or wrote that sentence ten times a day for three months, that would be a thousand times. If you said or wrote that sentence thirty times a day for a month, that would be a thousand times. It sounds like a very simple thing, and it really is. This is a principle that is taught about the success mindset by people who are motivational speakers who talk about motivation and pursuing success. The key concept here is to re-program your mind to control what you are thinking by either writing or saying something that changes the way you think and see the world around you or your present circumstances.
That is a great way to keep your goals in the forefront. Make it a habit. Write out a sentence of whatever it is you want. Then take that one sentence and maybe post it up on your refrigerator or on your bathroom wall where you can see it every day. Make it a goal to say or write it a thousand times. Once you see the effect this has on your thinking, you will want to keep using this powerful motivational strategy.
