I think my kids like scary movies so much because it’s so entertaining for them to watch me come unglued! No matter how many times I beg the characters on the screen, “Don’t go in the basement! Don’t go outside! Don’t you know you’re in a horror movie?” They fall for it every time and so do I! I know something’s about to jump out or blast on to the screen as the music changes but I can’t help myself. I shriek and jump out of my seat. Every time. I mean every time. Even if I’ve seen the movie before! I think I know what the problem is. It’s the inference. You know what I mean. In most horror movies anyway, the lights are low, the scary image is flashed by quickly, you have to use your imagination a lot. If they just turned the lights up and let us get a good look at whatever it is, it probably wouldn’t seem that scary at all. But they don’t and we are left to infer the worst possible feeling, situation and image.

You know I think our thoughts are the same way. They flash into our heads and we don’t take the time to turn the lights up and really examine what they are trying to tell us. Instead, we flinch and react. At least I do. A thought comes in and without a challenge, I’m in an instant cascade leading to a million other thoughts that may or may not be factual or relevant. I just go into a free fall sometimes.

What I’m thinking is that like the images in a horror movie, if we could just yank those nasty thoughts out by the hair and stick them under a light, I bet they wouldn’t be so scary after all. I bet we could just examine that one thought without letting it lead us down a path we’ve been down so many times before based on something we hated in the past or something we worry about for the future.

Thoughts are so powerful and can be downright scary if we let them. Lately I’ve been trying to just look at my thoughts, kind of observe them without letting them lead a charge of hysteria at their whim. This idea that we can have control over our thoughts is so helpful to break cycles of rumination that keep us stuck in the same place. Recognizing, noticing and trying to understand our thoughts is protective and healing. Now I don’t know if all of this will help me stay calm during a scary movie, but hopefully it will in life!

Research shows that the average person has up to 60,000 thoughts per day. And of those 60,000 thoughts, 95% are exactly the same thoughts as the day before. That means of the 60,000 thoughts you will have today, 57,000 of them will be the same thoughts you had yesterday. And even more concerning is that 80% of those thoughts are negative. Our negative thoughts impact our physical health and emotional well-being.

Scientists have shown that we turn on the stress response with our negative thoughts; releasing a cascade of potentially harmful neurochemicals into the body. The interesting part of this research is that these chemicals are produced by real or imagined events. This means that we can set off this cascade with unsubstantiated worry or fear.

To take this a step further, studies have shown that much of what we worry about never actually happens. In fact, 85% is completely fabricated in our minds. And with the 15% of worries that did actually happen, 79% of the study participants discovered that either they handled the difficulty better than expected or that it taught them a valuable lesson. That means 97% of our worries are baseless! And what's worse is that these baseless worries and are putting us at risk for stress-related diseases!

So how do you change your thought patterns from negative to positive? It starts with awareness and metacognition. Metacognition is thinking about what you are thinking about. When you are observing your thoughts, you are separate from them. In order to change the habit of negative thinking, you need to pay attention to your thoughts and create space between them in order to examine them. Once you become aware of a thought, ask yourself these questions:

• Is this thought really true?
• How is this thought serving you? In other words, what is the benefit of keeping this thought?
• How can you reframe this thought? Meaning, how can you look at it differently?
• Can you shift your perspective to see things in a more positive way?

Following these steps enables you to take a proactive role and deploy radical accountability by taking ownership of, and responsibility for, your thoughts, your moods, and your actions. And over time you will train your brain to weed out the negative and focus on what's strong rather than what's wrong in your life.