Think Better, Feel Better: How to Renew Your Mind and Speak Life

Hey, friends.

Today we're talking about why your mindset matters and just how powerful your thoughts and your mind are and how changing them can literally change your life.

Welcome to Faith Filled Living, the podcast for women who want to find joy again, grow closer to God, and rediscover the woman he created you to be.

I'm your host, Kristin Fitch.

Each week you'll find encouragement, honest conversations, biblical perspective, and practical tools to help you experience more joy, purpose and peace in in everyday life.

Because the woman God created you to be is still there.

And it's never too late to come alive to the life he created you to live.

So today we're going to talk about why our mindset, our thoughts and our beliefs actually matter so much and how those things actually impact our health, our health outcomes, what we actually have in our lives, and what happens to us.

And so we're going to dig into this both from a biblical and a science perspective today.

So I can't wait to share with you a couple of things that I've dug into.

Before we jump into today's episode, though, I do want to share two things with you real quick.

The first is you can grab my Rewire your Mind workbook.

If you go to KristinFitch.com and go to my workbooks page, scroll down, it's near the bottom.

But it's basically going to teach you some simple swaps to take your negative thinking and your worry and start shifting it into what God tells us and how to pull yourself out of that and back into thinking that's going to actually benefit you.

So go ahead and grab that.

And then you also get my Faith Friday emails if you sign up for or if you grab one of those workbooks.

So I'd love for you to go grab that because it's so much about some of the things I'm going to share with you about today's episode.

The second thing is today we're going to talk about our mind, our body.

We're going to talk about some scripture, but from a higher level perspective.

But I will share in the show notes.

I've done some different episodes about why your thoughts matter so much.

I've even done episodes with guests that talk about what we believe and what we believe about healing, that God promises us how people have been healed because of that.

And I will share those in the show notes as well.

Because if you're somebody that's looking for something more specific like that, then those would be great episodes for you to listen to as well.

Okay, so let's dive in.

So the reason I wanted to record today's episode started because I saw someone share about a study, and it was basically about people with that we're going to have knee surgery.

So these are people that had knee osteoarthritis.

So basically what happened is this was between Baylor College of Medicine and the Department of Veteran Affairs.

So they basically took people who had this osteoarthritis of the knee, and they put them in three different groups.

The first group, they did actual normal knee surgery, so arthroscopic surgery on their knees.

The second group, they did not do surgery, but they still put.

They took them through as if they were doing the surgery.

So they still made two tiny incisions in their.

Their knee, but they did not actually go in and.

And do anything to their knee, but they went through the motions so that the people wouldn't know if they had the surgery or not.

And then the third group, they did some.

Something in between, like, they did a. Oh, what?

It was like a debridement of their knee to try to kind of clear it out.

So the researchers followed these people for two years.

And what was amazing is the group that had the actual surgery and the group that did not have surgery but thought that they might have had it, they had the same outcomes, meaning they had the same amount of pain relief.

They had the same amount of improvement in mobility, you know, and movement.

And then they also had the same amount of belief that their knee was better.

So the whole idea here, though, is not that surgery is not needed or that surgery can't be something that's needed.

Actually, my husband's soon having to go in and do a hip replacement.

He's had issues with his hips for a long time.

So on X ray, you can see where there's actually an issue.

So I'm not saying surgery's never needed.

What I'm saying, though, is your mind is so powerful that it can heal your body.

There is a whole.

What is it called?

There's a whole school of thought or a whole type of study called epigenetics.

And it's basically that our environment turns on and off our gene expression, right?

So it turns on and off, you know, more natural killer cells going and working in our bodies, or it turns on and off cancer cells in all these things.

And I'm not saying that our environment doesn't cause some of these things.

Obviously, there's toxins, environmental toxins and exposure.

What I'm saying is what we believe to be true and what we perceive to be true, and the things we think do affect our genes and they do affect how our body responds to things.

So my point is, you've probably heard, or at least some of you, that even people that have a positive attitude towards maybe if they're going through cancer or they have some other illness, the people that have a belief, a hope that they could get better, and often a faith that, you know, that they're able to get better, those people typically have better outcomes.

Even a couple years ago, I was on a golf cart and I fell off and I hit my head and I had a.

Let's see, I had a skull fracture and I had a.

Like a scalp hematoma.

I was very fortunate.

I mean, yes, I had some immediate effects the next day, like where I felt dizzy and I was sick and all that.

And I went to the ER and they checked me out and kept me for a couple hours.

But anyways, so I had some issues for about two months, different ones, like hearing and different things.

But when I saw the neurologist a couple weeks after this happened, and I was doing pretty good at that time, like I said, I had very minor things going on, and those all resolved within two months.

But he said to me, well, most people that have traumatic brain injuries or a fracture or a concussion, most of them have really good outcomes.

If they are.

If life for them was already going okay, what does that mean, in other words, for people that had purpose, they had connections.

For people that, you know, maybe already had all the things they needed, right?

They had a home, they had food, they had.

They were taken care of.

Those people's outcomes were usually really, really good.

It was the people that might have already been down on their luck or maybe they were already struggling physically or mentally, those people tend to have worse outcomes.

And it makes a lot of sense.

But this article, to me is just another example of what the Bible already tells us, right?

Like what we think will happen.

I mean, not will happen, but what we think matters.

You know, basically, there's obviously one scripture that says, like, if we believe it, you know, we can move a mountain.

Well, that's kind of an example of this, right?

The people that believe their knee got better, their knee got better.

Do you see what I'm saying?

So it matters so much, and I want to share this with you.

Proverbs 4.

23 Says, above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.

But we, you know, yes, I'm talking about our mind today, but it's also our heart.

Like, you can't just say, I'm going to say good thoughts.

You have to believe it.

And you have to fully take that in.

Another scripture is 2 Corinthians 10, 5, which says we demolish arguments in every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Guys, we have to realize how powerful our thoughts are.

And I love what Robert second says online.

He's somebody that I follow.

He's always sharing faith.

He works in a hospital.

I'm not sure what he does, but he says prayer is medicine, worship is medicine.

God's word is medicine.

Fresh fruits and vegetable are medicine.

Exercise is medicine.

Alone time with God is medicine.

And sleep is medicine.

But I think we forget just how powerful our thoughts are, just how powerful what we believe about our thoughts and how they are tied to our body.

And I think I've heard another study and I don't have this one referenced, so I can't, I won't share it unless I can find it.

But there's another study that talks about our body.

When it believes it needs it, it will actually produce the chemical it needs.

Meaning, let's say that you were in pain.

Like maybe you got in a car accident and you hurt yourself, but you didn't need surgery or anything.

Your body, when we allow it to, will actually create more of the chemical it needs.

Right?

Our body is its own pharmacy.

And I mean a natural pharmacy, obviously not a medication or drug pharmacy.

But our body knows what to do when we get out of the way, when we align our thoughts with.

With what God tells us our bodies can do, what our minds can do.

Let me pull it up.

It was, it says, mindset matters, exercise and the placebo effect.

So basically this was in.

Psychology, science.

But the gist is this.

They studied.

They did a study and they tested the relationship between exercise and health and your mindset.

So they took 84 female room attendants.

So basically people working to, like, clean hotels, working in seven different hotels.

And they measured their physiological health variables affected by exercise.

So they basically put people in two groups.

One group, they just watched the people and they obviously measured their.

They did their health numbers ahead of time, right?

So like their blood pressure, their body mass index, like, they looked at all this data and Then after the study was over, they looked at the data again.

But the second group, they educated those people.

So they took half of the room attendants or people cleaning the rooms, and they explained to them that they actually already lived.

Like what they were doing cleaning rooms all day.

So they were on their feet, they were bending, they were moving, they were cleaning.

They explained to them that what they're doing is actually a type of exercise, right?

They were actually doing healthy stuff.

And they explained to them that the work they're doing at work actually satisfied the Surgeon General's recommendation for active lifestyle.

And then they gave them examples of how their work was exercised.

And so after, let's see, after four weeks of one group being educated that all of their physical effort during their workday was actually them being active and actually moving their bodies, and that's what they needed.

Because going into this, I think the perception of a lot of the attendants was that they're so busy working and then they're so tired when they get home that they weren't fitting in exercise, right?

Like something separate that they were doing.

So I think a lot of them felt like, gosh, I'm not very healthy.

Well, after four weeks, the group that they informed about their active lifestyle had significant results.

So basically, compared to the control group, the people that were told that the work, their work during the day was actually active in exercise type of thing, they decreased their weight, their blood pressure, improved body fat, improved waist to hip ratio, improved in body mass index.

And so basically this, they said the results supported the hypothesis that exercise affects health in part or whole via the placebo effect, meaning what you believe impacts what happens to your body.

Meaning why do we think I have to go to the gym?

And I'm not saying don't go to the gym, do whatever movement works for you, but don't discount all the times you move during the day.

For instance, I have on a Sunday had, or another day had family coming over for dinner, and I'm making all the food and I'm cleaning up and I'm doing stuff where I never sit down the entire day because, you know, if I didn't have time to make stuff ahead of time, that I'm doing it all that day.

I try to not do that.

I try to do it over several days, but I will have walked 20,000 or more steps, 25,000 in that day, and I didn't leave my kitchen.

So we're discounting a lot of our effort, a lot of our movement.

Like, did you vacuum today?

Did you have to do laundry and bend over, and then you were standing up and you were folding it.

In other words, did you have to run errands?

Did you walk for 10 minutes at lunch?

Did you do a couple.

What is that called?

Ankle raises?

So I think we don't want to.

We don't give credit to all the little things we're doing because it adds up.

But imagine if we started giving ourselves credit for all the things we're doing and giving ourselves a pat on the back, like, good job, Kristen.

You go like, I try to do this even before I read that study.

I try to remind myself, you know what?

I walk most every day.

I miss days here and there.

When I walk with a girlfriend, I walk at least an hour.

When I walk by myself, it's more like 30, 40 minutes, at least.

But when I don't walk, I review my day and I say, that's okay.

I cleaned all day.

Or last week, in the evening, I painted our now guest bedroom where my son recently moved.

And I was standing the entire time, right?

Like, I was rolling and painting.

I was taping everything.

So I was active for two hours or three hours into the evening, painting.

Well, I'm giving myself credit for that, friends.

Okay.

And you should do the same.

But once again, so both of those studies just point out to us that what you think does partially determine what goes on in your body.

And I think this is so powerful because if you're somebody where you get caught in feeling bad about yourself or you get caught in worry or you get caught in anxiety, because let me tell you, friends, I. I can.

I can go there.

Right there.

I can go right there with you.

I try not to be.

I'm a pretty positive person.

But, I mean, I'm a mom, right?

So, of course worry creeps in.

But my point about saying that is when I realized just how powerful my thoughts are, when I realize how powerful the words I speak, both in my mind, silently and out loud, how much power they have, I am so much more motivated to really work on my mindset, really work on what I allow my thoughts, where I allow my thoughts to go, and wanting to shift them.

If I go somewhere that I don't really want to go, which is why that download, that workbook, rewire your mind, is so helpful.

It just gives you a couple really easy shifts you can make when you start going there.

Right at the beginning of Please.

Sorry.

Thanks.

A book by Mark Batterson.

He's.

He basically shares this.

He says, according to linguists, abracadabra is the most universal, universally used word that doesn't need translation.

And what he goes on to say is it says the ancient word abracadabra means as I speak, I shall create.

In other words, he says, words create worlds.

Words, said the Jewish theologian Abraham Heischel, are themselves sacred.

God's tool for creating the universe and our tools for bringing holiness or evil into the world.

And he shares at the top of the page, John 1:1, which says in the beginning was the word.

So we forget how powerful our words are.

And our words, our thoughts are words, right?

Whether spoken out loud or written or thought in our head, they're words and they have power beyond what most of us realize.

And Mark Batterson goes on to say on this first page of his book that basically there was a series of studies that University of Chicago did, and they were recording counseling sessions between, I think it was between couples.

Let me look here.

And basically they said some sessions are successful and then others weren't.

And the main factor was the difference, said Dr. Eugene Glendland, is in how the counselees talk.

Life is a grand game of Simon says, and you're Simon.

I'm sorry, I said that poorly.

But anyways.

And then basically he says, if you want to change your life, you have to change your words.

And gosh, friends, I'm telling you, it matters so much.

So one book I definitely recommend, if this is of interest to you, is, please, sorry, thanks, the one I just referenced.

And there are so many good books, but this matters so much.

Okay, and then another thing I want to share with you just how powerful this is.

And I've shared this book before, but there is a book by Dr. Gabor Mate, and it's called when the Body says no, Exploring the Stress Disease Connection.

And yes, he's talking about stress, but he's also talking about it's the way that we perceive things that, that have happened to us, the way that we show up in the world.

So, for instance, I think he shares something like 86% of chronic disease is in women.

And he says women tend to write, we're like the appeasers, the caregivers.

We're the one that puts everybody else first in a lot of cases.

And it's not that that's wrong or bad.

It's that we often do it to the detriment of ourselves, Meaning we do it and then we suppress or repress or we don't speak, express ourselves for what we need.

Like, we don't say what we need and what we want and what we desire.

We just bottle it up or we hold on to it.

And he goes on to explain that different personality types, right, or patterns based on maybe something that happened to us, or maybe we have become the people pleaser or maybe we just find.

Find that we don't want conflict.

So we just are always the.

We're just always in agreement with people or whatever it might be.

But he's explaining that there's these different patterns of people that tend to get different illnesses.

And of course, once again, I am not saying that you.

You or I have a condition because of this.

Only what I'm saying is that is an indicator that someone might get a certain type right?

In other words, he finds that people that bottle everything up and then they explode tend to have certain types of health challenges versus somebody else that maybe just kind of isolates and separates themselves.

So what I'm saying is there's a connection.

And that's a great book if you're somebody that wants to dig in more to the health side of things.

But to me, it just reminds us that one, we need to feel safe enough to express ourselves, to say what we need.

And it.

Maybe it's not in every moment and this is a process.

Maybe it's writing it down in your journal.

Maybe you don't feel comfortable saying it to someone near you at this point.

But we need to start getting it out, we need to release it, and then we need to start shifting how we are in the world so that we can.

We can be healthy and so that we can allow our mind and our words to create the life that we want.

And I'm not saying that means we won't go through things people.

I'm not saying, like, this is like dream up a, you know, fantasy life.

That's not what I'm saying.

But what I am saying is what we believe and then what we speak does impact our health and it does impact our life.

And yes, it's.

It's partly that if you keep saying I'm broke.

Well, you're not.

How do you leave space in your thoughts for possibility of how you might make money on the side?

Do you see what I'm saying?

Like, in other words, the negative thoughts or the continuous, like saying something you don't want, you're amplifying it.

You're so focused on it that you might be pushing away, like, space in your mind for creativity, for curiosity, for enthusiasm, enthusiasm towards something that actually might help you go towards something new, something that will actually give you what you want.

Kind of like how can you ever meet somebody if your list is so long and you never get to know someone because you're like, nope, they already.

I don't even know them.

But they don't fit this bill, that they don't fit in my mold.

Well, maybe give somebody a chance before you.

You already check them onto the off list, you know, or there's never any guys worth meeting or gals or whoever, you know, depending on who you are.

But what I'm saying is pray for the possibility.

Pray for that future that you want and then speak into the future you want, because God tells us, right, Focus on what's good and worthy and these things.

And what's good and worthy is you having some level of abundance, finding somebody, if that's what's, you know, lined up for you.

And.

But basically what I'm saying is like, we need to stop speaking into our lives and into ourselves.

Things that are not helping us, right, that are harming us.

And in the book, please.

Sorry.

Thanks.

Let me see if I can find the page.

Mark Patterson also says, let's see if I can pull this up.

Okay.

Kind of like I was saying in the book, when the body says no, and Gabor Matei says that a lot of people that are going through, right, some sort of chronic illness or cancer, a lot of people are repressing or suppressing or not expressing themselves.

And Mark Batterson has something to say about that.

And he's he first before that paragraph I'm going to share.

He says he's talking about that people.

When we have bitterness, then it's hard for the Holy Spirit to.

To be, to.

To act in our lives, like to.

For us to hear him.

Okay.

And so anyway, so he's going on to say, as I see it, we have two options when it comes to the pain we inflict on others and the pain that is inflicted on us.

We can repress it or we can confess it.

Whatever you repress will eventually depress, and that creates the beach ball effect I've already alluded to.

You can keep it submerged for a while, but it will eventually resurface.

All it takes is a trigger, like Fred asking Hank for a paperclip.

Unforgiveness is death by a thousand paperclips.

But, you know, basically, that's my point is we have to bring to the surface, like, what is going on with us?

What are we thinking?

Are we holding on to feeling like someone's wronged us or we're a victim no matter what someone's done to us?

There's a really good book by Edith Eager called the Gift.

She.

As a child, she was in the concentration camps, and she basically lost her entire family.

But she made it out and then became a psychologist, I think something like that.

Psychiatrist.

Psychologist.

And at least a year or two ago, she was still living.

She was in her 90s.

She's written several books.

But she says something in her book that is really powerful.

And she says when she works with people, a lot of times when people are stuck feeling like a victim in their lives, like, meaning something's happened to you, like maybe you were sexually abused, sexually assaulted, maybe you have a diagnosis, or maybe you.

You had something happen at the workplace, or maybe you were married and your spouse betrayed you, right?

I mean, there's.

It could be anything.

But she explains that when somebody's stuck in a victim mentality.

And I'm not saying for a moment we wouldn't be there, but at some point we want to process something that's happened to us, a trauma or whatever it is, and then we want to be able to move forward, right?

We don't want to just keep replaying it and hashing it to the point where it's holding us a prisoner, if you will.

But she says victims say, why me?

Like, why did this happen to me?

And they.

They kind of get stuck here, right?

It's like a.

It gets on repeat in our minds and our thoughts, and that affects our bodies, right?

That can affect us feeling depressed, it can affect us feeling scared.

And I'm not saying that those aren't reasonable things.

What I'm saying is we don't want to stay in that place.

And she says, but when we can move from why me?

This is powerful.

So listen to what's next.

What comes next for me, even though I've been through this thing, or even though I'm still walking through this thing, like, when we can change our perspective, when we can change what we're looking at from what happened to us before today to what's going to come next on the horizon.

What's the possibility for my life?

How can I use this terrible thing or this hard thing or this difficult thing?

And how can I.

How can I improve?

Or when I say improve, I don't mean it was our fault.

What I mean is, how can I take it and be better?

Like, better, or can I forgive the person so that it cannot be a chain on me, Right?

It doesn't mean the person, they're not responsible or if something happened to you, What I'm saying is we don't want it to hold us back.

And yes, we should work with a professional when we need to.

But what I'm saying is, once again, when we change our language about what we've been through, when we change our language about what we are going through, we can acknowledge that something's hard and still move forward, or at least as we do the work.

But it's just so important.

Right.

Is what I'm saying.

And I just think that if we.

If everyone could realize how powerful our words are, it would make such a difference in our lives.

For instance, what are we focusing on?

And I think this, this example might hit home for a lot of you.

It did for me.

I'm pretty sure when I read this before I saved it a couple weeks ago, I totally cried.

Okay, so here's what it is.

This is on Instagram and The account is awaken1.

But there's some spaces.

So if you want this, let me know and I'll just send you the link.

But basically, this person saying, my best friend posted a photo of me that I hated.

I texted her immediately, please delete that.

She replied, no.

And she said, I was actually annoyed.

My stomach wasn't flat, my hair looked messy.

I wasn't posing.

I was laughing so hard my eyes were almost closed.

It was everything I would naturally delete.

I texted again, seriously, I look awful.

She replied, you have no idea what you look like.

So I just want you to hold there for a minute.

How many of you can relate to this?

Now, there's probably some of you listening that cannot because you are fully embracing you and what you look like today and free for you.

I say, you're awesome and I hope we can all be a little more like you.

But for the rest of us that have struggled with this, or we have friends that have, then I'll keep going.

She says, that irritated me even more.

So I called her.

What does that even mean?

She was quiet for a second.

Then she said, come over.

Okay?

And then the lady goes, when I got there, she opened her camera roll.

There were hundreds of photos of us.

But most of the photos of me were ones I've never seen.

Me sitting on her kitchen counter eating pizza.

Me asleep beside her dog, Me dancing barefoot at her wedding, me holding her baby, me laughing with my head thrown back.

None of them are photos I would have posted.

And then she says, I kept scrolling.

She said, why do you have all these terrible pictures of me?

She looked genuinely confused.

Terrible.

Then she took the phone from my hand.

She opened the photo and said, you're looking at your stomach.

I know it almost makes you cry.

Here she says, I'm looking at the happiest I've seen you in months.

And then they look at other photos and she says, you hate this one because of your arms.

I love it because you were holding my daughter for the first time.

You hate this one because you weren't wearing makeup.

I love it because we laughed until the 2 in the morning.

And this is how the post starts to wrap up.

I realized I'd spent years deleting photographs because I didn't like the way my body looked in them.

Meanwhile, someone who loved me had been saving those exact photographs because she loved the way my life looked in them.

And then, of course, she said, I didn't ask her to delete the photo.

I posted it myself.

Oh, how true is that?

Like, how many of us are so focused on the wrong things?

Like, hey, but look, I, I'm right there with that lady.

I don't ask people to delete photos of me or anything, but of course there's photos that I see and I go, oh my gosh, like, wow, I, I look heavy.

Or, man, you can see my, I haven't been doing push ups or whatever.

So my, you know, it looks a little bit thick in the bra area, whatever it is.

Like my arms are sticking out of the front of the dress.

Like that little part right between your, your bra and your armpits.

Like, I totally get it.

And I agree.

I don't want to hone in on a detail so much.

I don't want to obsess so much on that.

The dress didn't look as good as I wanted.

Yes, I'd like the dress to look better, right?

So either I want to buy a different dress or of course I could be a little slimmer.

I mean, I'm fit, but I'm, you know, I'm not 25 anymore.

And you know, I, I'd rather enjoy a piece of bread with my dinner than be so focused on only my weight.

So my point though is, is what if we stopped looking at the things we didn't like about ourselves?

The things we didn't like about our lives, about our spouse, about our jobs.

And what if we started looking and speaking life over the parts that we did?

What if we started giving more thanks and praise to God for every good thing?

Do you know what happens when we do that?

Life gets so much better.

Guys.

I've done it myself.

Like, there's been, you know, little small moments.

I'VE been married for 27 years.

My husband I started dating five years prior to that.

Of course, I've had times in my marriage, like, not for long, but where I've.

I've been grumbling to myself, like, oh, why doesn't he ever, like, plan a cute date?

Or.

And I don't mean we don't go out on dates.

What I mean is he's not really, like, the romantic planner.

If I say, let's go out to dinner and I'll give him, you know, a choice or.

But I'm more the one that kind of plans the things, you know.

But on occasion, you're like, gosh, wouldn't it be nice if my spouse would do this thing?

Well, we're all different.

And so if I focus on.

Or if I focus on, like, oh, you know what?

He didn't get enough sleep last night, so he's a little snippy the next day.

But I know this about him, so why am I going to focus on that?

I mean, yeah, I mean, there's times where I might.

But when I start realizing, lord, thank you so much for a husband that cares so much for the people around him.

He's always doing things around our house and fixing things and doing things that I ask him to do.

He's helping.

Helping our sons who are, you know, all over 18 now.

He's helping his parents all the time.

He's helping his sisters.

Like, he's always doing things for other people.

I mean, there's rarely a night that goes by that he's not.

He used to coach, you know, sports for 18 years, you know, as a volunteer.

He didn't get paid to do that.

So what I'm saying is, when I start thanking God and praising him for what an amazing spouse I do have and how well he cares for us, and he's not perfect and nor am I, you know, but when we start looking, when we start wanting this idealistic person or idealistic home or idealistic body, we get lost in.

In a belief that there is perfect.

We get lost in a belief that something else is better, Right?

Like the grass is greener.

So, yes, our words matter, our thoughts, our mindset matters, but so do our beliefs.

Because when we start going back to scripture, when we start doing what God tells us to do, the Bible is literally an instruction manual for how to live.

And when we do it, our life gets better.

It doesn't mean our circumstances always get better, but our life gets better because we start seeing the beauty all around us.

We start Seeing the goodness around us, the kindness of people.

We start seeing, like how beautiful the sunset is every night, even if we don't feel well.

Do you see what I'm saying?

So, one, we need to start thinking about what are we believing?

What are we doing on a daily basis?

Are we praising God?

Are we getting in the word?

Are we praying over our marriage?

Are we praying over our kids?

Are we praying for the people that are irritating us the most?

And are we giving thanks for the things that are in our life right now?

And are we saying to God, like, you know what, God, I don't really like this thing right now or this person very much, but I'm going to believe you for the fact that there is something good in here, that I'm going to learn something or that I'm going to become a bigger hearted person because I'm going to learn to have more grace for this person or for the circumstance.

Or it's possible what I'm walking through one day will be used to help other people.

Right?

And so we have to pay attention to what we're believing.

We have to get in God's word.

We have to change our thoughts in the words we're speaking over ourselves, over other people, over our life.

And like I said, this is not a magic wand in the sense of like, oh, I want, you know, I want to make $500,000, you know, or whatever, like, whatever the word.

But it's saying, I know God has good things for me and I'm going to speak life into those things.

The promises that he promises in the Bible, obviously they need to align with what God wants, you know, what he says.

But this is how we start changing our life.

This is how there's.

Okay, so what am I trying to say here?

I've listened to interviews before and I've met people like this and I can, I can be like this.

Although I'm still, you know, we're all on our faith journeys and I could definitely be here all the time, which I am not.

But I'll be listening to an interview.

And one time it was a Christian apologist, it was a professor.

He was being interviewed on a pretty large podcast.

And I remember the interviewer, he said to his guest near the end, the Christian apologist, like, here's the thing, like, because this guy wasn't really sure, like he believes in God, but he's maybe kind of like he's not sure about if he's a Christian.

I think that's maybe what he said.

I don't Remember?

But he says to the Christian apologist, there's something about you.

You have this peace about you and this joy about you.

And I was like, exactly.

Because that man was so intimately familiar and had a relationship with Christ, right?

That's what he did.

I mean, his job was actually mathematics.

But he wrote about Christ, he spoke about Christ, things like this, about Christianity.

But what I'm saying is when you are living, getting in God's word, you're making time for him.

When you are giving him praise and thanks, when we are focused on our words, make worlds.

When our words create, okay, they create literally, kind of like Harold in the purple crayon.

Then we realize when we live like that, we start to experience more of the fruit of the spirit, right?

The Holy Spirit.

And some of the fruit is peace, right?

And gladness.

And, you know, all these things.

And so what I'm saying is, if you want more of that, then you have to start seeing what is it.

You're.

What are you focusing on every day?

What are you spending time in and with.

What are you expecting in your life?

Because what you're expecting is words.

Meaning if you're like, of course he's late again, or this again.

Like, even if you're having that thought, you're having an expectation that it's not going to work out.

You have an expectation that you know something isn't going to go your way.

So you see what I'm saying?

Like, even if you don't think it's a thought or a word, it is, because you just have the thought even after it happens.

So let's start.

Sorry.

Let's start flipping the script.

Let's start changing our words and see how our life changes.

Start writing it down.

I've shared this before.

It's probably been a while, but, you know, a lot of people talk about, keep a prayer journal.

Just keep a journal.

Journal in general.

But by that, what I mean is if you wrote down the things you're praying for, the things you.

You're asking God for, if you don't ever go back and see what God's answered, you know, how his promises have come true in your life, in the small things, the big things, the everyday things, how will you.

How will you see it?

Like, so.

So many of us get so caught up in our day that we forget, you know, last year, maybe we couldn't afford whatever it is, or maybe we could afford something, but it was tight, right?

Or maybe we were praying that our.

That us or our spouse would get this, you know, this new job because it was more money.

And then it happened, but it was so many months later, we just forgot that we were praying for that.

So we have to be careful to not forget what it is in the season prior that we were really praying for.

And then it happened.

But did we move on and miss it?

Right?

Did we miss the miracle, the promise?

So once again today, I just wanted to do a couple things.

I wanted to tell you that your mind, your thoughts, your mindset and your beliefs and what you focus on matters more than you will ever know.

And when you start making shifts with this, I think you're going to start seeing changes in your life and your attitude and how people respond to you.

And like I said, if you want to dive deeper into these ideas, then definitely I will put a couple links in the show notes to some other episodes that might be of interest to you.

But I think I mentioned at the beginning of the episode there's also an interview I did about healing, you know, divine healing.

But it was the people that believed God for the promises in the Bible because God says he will heal you and that we have that same ability through, through the Holy Spirit.

But what I'm saying is there's whole books on this one I shared in the episode.

I'll link.

There's another book I've read called Revealing the Healer.

And it's.

It's basically a couple that has a healing ministry.

I think they're in Florida.

But it is an amazing book and it just shares again what God promises and how our beliefs in being able to be healed and believing God for it and then actually speaking that over ourselves.

Now, I'm not saying that healing is always divine, instantaneous or anything like that.

I mean, there is that kind of healing.

There are other people that over time heal, but.

And there's other times where we might not understand why someone doesn't heal.

So I'm not saying this is like a, on this side of heaven that we'll understand it.

All right?

I'm not saying that.

But what I am saying is we need to better understand all of these things so that we can circle the promises in the Bible.

We can circle what God tells us, the blessings in the Bible that he says that, you know, the people then had, and so do we.

He's promising the same things to us now that he always has.

But we need to pray over those things and we need to be aware of those things and.

And then we need to do the things the Bible's telling us to do and we need to think about and speak the things the Bible's telling us to speak.

Right?

That was the one I was referencing earlier that I did not speak.

So we just, we have to realize our words matter.

Speaking scripture over ourselves, over our homes, over our lives matter.

Our words matter.

So I hope that today's episode at least gave you a spark, an inkling, an idea, but maybe a bit of an encouragement that we have more power over our lives than we realize by what we speak.

The words we think well or, you know, the thoughts we have and the words we speak, the words we write, the way we're speaking to other people.

Because once again, the Bible says the words have power of life and death.

That's what today's episode is all about, that words are that powerful.

God literally created the entire world in words, right?

They said God created and he spoke.

So anyways, go grab that Rewire your mindset workbook.

It's kristenfitch.com and go to my Workbooks page.

As always, I love hearing from you.

So if today's episode encouraged you, I'd love for you to send me a email.

Just send.

You can go to my website and contact me if you enjoyed today's episode.

If you could leave a rating review on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts, it helps the show get discovered by more people so that we can continue to uplift and encourage people in their faith journey as well as all of the other parts of their lives.