When you are thinking to yourself, you can practise being able to identify four thinking components:

• what am I saying to myself?
• what questions am I asking myself?
• what’s happened in the past?
• and what am I imagining about the future?

There are also neutral thoughts. These are most commonly factual statements you make to yourself about your environment or the situation. The key test of whether a thought is helpful or hindering is whether or not it is moving you towards what you would like to do, have, achieve etc.

In problem-solving, you might decide it’s unhelpful to imagine the likely future. Instead, you could imagine an unreal scenario or an artificial thing, and use it as a sort of stage prop. For example, you might imagine how you could connect this to that, in order to move forward. For example: how could I use this product to help me get more
customers?

How can I think more successfully and achieve better results?

The first thing to do is to develop a greater awareness of those four thinking components, mentioned above. Some people get stuck in one of the four areas. Often, it’s to do with what they say to themselves. ‘I can’t do that’ is very common, along with ‘I’m no good with names’ or ‘I
can’t remember dates’. People give themselves messages, without realising that the greatest proportion of their thinking isn’t original, it just goes on in the same way it did in the past.

This is why, if you’re on a downward spiral with some hindering thinking patterns going on in your head, you are likely to keep repeating those hindering thoughts until you create the self-awareness that allows you to break the repetitive loop.

Some people have a very closed mind to the future. They tend to imagine everything going wrong. People like this might be asking themselves good questions, but inside they’ll be insisting: Oh no, that won’t happen because… and imagine the worst. They’re answering their questions in a negative way.

Brain Magic Tips

Three steps to effective thinking:

1. Spot the components: Develop a greater awareness of which of the four thinking components you are using.

2. Help or hinder: Work out whether the components you are using are helping or hindering you.

3. Use solution focused thinking: Identify the things that work, and do more of them. Identify the things that don’t work, and stop doing them.
You’d be surprised how many people keep doing things
that aren’t working for them!