Changing a default thinking habit is like learning to drive on the other side of the road. It takes concentration, effort, and help, but with prayer, a clear vision, and the right people beside you, new thinking tracks can form.
Quick answer: Default thinking patterns are deeply worn habits of thought, feeling, and behaviour, so changing them takes moment-by-moment effort. Seven steps help: pray for awareness and help, name the dangers of staying the same, hold a compelling vision of the change, create cognitive reminders, oppose old thoughts with new truth, refuse to let old feelings steer, and get a coach who will encourage and gently correct you.
In this post:
- Why Changing a Default Thinking Habit Feels So Hard
- Seven Steps to Change Your Default Thinking Patterns
- Quotes to Consider
- Questions to Consider
- Further Reading
When you are trying to change a default thinking habit or behaviour, it is like learning to drive on the other side of the road. It’s hard work.
Whether you drive on the left or the right, changing your thinking is difficult. It must be very frightening for foreign drivers used to driving on the right-hand side of the road to come to places such as New Zealand and have to adjust to driving on the left.
I remember following a typical white tourist camper van once. As it came up to a roundabout, it turned right instead of left. I wondered where on earth it was going, as I then saw it on the other side of the intersection.
Why Changing a Default Thinking Habit Feels So Hard
When you have driven on one side of the road all your life, it becomes a deeply ingrained habit, so deep that it takes moment-by-moment concentration and effort to make sure you don’t revert to old patterns. It’s a default thinking habit. Like sheep tracks worn into a hillside, habits cut deep and are hard to break.
Addicts find it incredibly difficult to change because they need to oppose every pull of thinking and feeling that would have them slip back into the old rut. But it isn’t just those with addiction issues who find it difficult to change. We all do.
Often we don’t change because it’s too difficult, and too much effort is required. We won’t try to change until we’re fully convinced that the current pattern of thinking and behaving is dangerous. Even then, it is so easy to slip across the median line and into real danger. Change really can feel like being on the wrong side of the road.
Seven Steps to Change Your Default Thinking Patterns
1. Pray
Ask God for the help you need to change. Ask for awareness of when you are slipping back into old habits. Ask for help to lasso those varmint thoughts.
2. Identify the Dangers
Be very clear about the dangers of continuing in this pattern of thinking and behaving. If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got. Write out the consequences for you, and for others, if you keep doing what you’ve always done.
3. Have a Compelling Vision
What do you hope to achieve through a new way of thinking and behaving? What do you desire from the change? Does it excite you? A vision fuels change in a way that willpower alone never can.
4. Create Cognitive Reminders
This might be a thinking compass notebook of new thinking habits, verses of scripture, an encouragement journal, or a scrapbook of pictures of the potential new you.
5. Oppose Your Old Thought Patterns With New Insights
Your old thinking patterns and self-talk are “stinky thinky” and need to be replaced with new thoughts and phrases. For example: “My past does not define me; it is the decisions I make today that define me.” Repeating these phrases daily is how mental rehearsal can change your mind, and how we build new rope bridges in our thinking. Be especially alert to self-talk that turns into praying against yourself through self-deprecation.
6. Oppose Your Feelings
Feelings are often repeating echoes of past experiences and don’t truly represent current reality. We need, at times, to discount our feelings before they discount us.
7. Get a Coach
I don’t think anybody likes to be corrected or challenged, especially by backseat drivers! But so often we need others beside us, reminding us to keep on the right side. It may be a friend, a family member, or a counsellor: someone who can give encouragement and praise, sprinkled lightly with correction and warning.
Quotes to Consider
- In order to oppose the influence and direction of one’s old feelings, a rational mind first needs a very good reason. Without truth to reassure, change isn’t possible. David Riddell
- People change when they hurt enough that they have to, learn enough that they want to, or receive enough that they are able to. John Maxwell
Questions to Consider
- Where do you seriously need to change your thinking and behaviour tracks?
- What qualities are needed in the people who can coach you through change?
Further Reading
- Change can feel like Being on the Wrong Side of the Road — Discover how neuroplasticity and the invite of Christ can rewire your brain. Learn to build a thinking compass and change your life.
- The Ancient Path: Why Habits Are So Hard to Break — Habits cut deep like sheep tracks. See why they’re hard to break, and how to carve a new path. It’s an Ancient Path.
- Your Rehearsal can Change your Mind — Train your brain with positive self-talk. Learn how intentional daily rehearsal can break old thinking tracks and help you overcome anxiety.
- How to Create New Rope Bridges in our Thinking — Learn how to rewire your brain for hope. Discover 7 steps to build new neural pathways and move past “I can’t change” into mental health.
- Willpower is never enough — Willpower fails when stress hits. Discover how to move past grit and cultivate lasting heart power to fill your deepest inner vacuums.
- Praying Against Yourself: The Abusive Art of Self-Deprecation — Stop poisoning your soul with negative self-talk. Learn how to stop self-deprecation, rewire your brain, and pray for your true self.
- A Change In Behavior, A Change In the Mind — True behavior change isn’t always dramatic. Explore how “metanoia”—small shifts in the mind—leads to lasting transformation over time.
- Recording: A Spiritual Habit for Better Mental Health — Keep a record of life’s moments and grow mental health that’s grounded in an unfolding story of faithfulness.
- Rewriting the Script: How to Change Your Brain
About the Author
Barry Pearman has spent almost 30 years as a mental health support worker, community chaplain, and pastor, and has walked through depression himself. His training includes SoulCare Foundations under Dr Larry Crabb, a Bachelor of Applied Theology, spiritual direction training, and certificates in CBT interventions, pastoral therapy, and integrated mental health care. Read more about Barry Pearman’s background and training.
Turning the Page offers a grace-filled path to mental wholeness through faith and hope.
