I am guilty of letting my mind run wild like a hyena! Thoughts enter my head and sometimes I do not even put forth the effort to control them. The result is that I find myself giving too much time to a negative mindset.
A pastor friend, Kent Workman, refers to this activity as “stinking thinking.”
“Stinking thinking” is defined by the online Cambridge Dictionary as “a bad way of thinking that makes you believe you will fail; that bad things will happen to you; or that you are not a very good person.”
Mental health practitioners refer to this practice as cognitive distortions. Some examples of stinking thinking — or its more formal name — cognitive distortions, include the following:
- Filtering: the practice of ignoring the positive while focusing on the negative.
- Catastrophizing: expecting the worst in a variety of life or work scenarios.
- Jumping to conclusions: making assumptions based on little evidence.
- Overgeneralizations: reaching conclusions based on one anecdotal experience.
- Control Issues: assuming that only others are to blame or that you are only to blame.
- Personalization: assuming that you are responsible when things go poorly.
While there are many other examples, these should suffice to show that stinking thinking is the fruit of a sinful root — ignoring what God is doing in our life and circumstances. Stinking thinking also fails to believe the best about God and others.
If stinking thinking goes unchecked, it will begin to impact our outlook on life, our family, our ministry, our interactions with other people and even our own future. Stinking thinking leads to stinking emotions which feed depression and anxiety and can ultimately hinder our obedience to Christ.
What can you do about it? Here are some suggestions:
1. Pay attention to your own thinking. All kinds of thoughts come into our minds — like billboards to a highway traveler. But just because they pop up does not mean we should believe or trust them. If you are finding yourself plagued by negative emotions and focusing on the negative side of life, then begin to pay attention to your thought life.
2. Write down your persistent thoughts and evaluate them. Whether you write in a journal or a piece of paper that you will toss in the garbage, you may find the simple practice of putting your thoughts in writing is enough to rid them of their power. When you read it back to yourself, you may be able to say, “that is ridiculous.”
3. Confess stinking thinking to the Lord and repent. To confess is to agree with God about something. When you discover that you have let your thoughts run to unrealistic conclusions and you have allowed unrealistic and negative thinking to impact your emotional well-being, you may need to confess and repent.
4. Confess it to a trusted friend. I remember hearing Nancy Leigh DeMoss, now Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, describe confession to a friend as tearing down the walls of your life and letting others in who could help you. Sometimes just saying something out loud to a fellow believer can help us overcome it.
5. Apply Philippians 4:8 to your life. Biblical meditation is the best and fastest way to get truth into our heart. Philippians 4:8 gives us a helpful picture of healthy thinking. Paul admonishes the Philippian saints this way: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
6. Change what you are listening to. If you are feeding your mind with an unhealthy amount of cable news, discernment blogs or Twitter, you may need to switch to good devotional literature, worship music and Scripture meditation.
7. Stay at it. A negative mindset colors everything in our life. The goal is not to replace stinking thinking with positive thinking, but instead replace it with accurate thinking. Christians are empowered to do this because we have a promise that in whatever is happening around us, God is working all things together for good (Romans 8:28).
2 Corinthians 10:5 reminds the follower of Christ, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Our thoughts are just that — thoughts. It is up to us, using the filter of God’s word, to determine which ones we allow to take up space in our minds. Let’s put a stop to stinking thinking.
Dr. Todd Gray 