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Toxic thinking can be like a game of pinball. It seems manageable—maybe even fun at first—but add a stress here, an old wound there, and before you know it, your mind is completely out of control.

 At any moment of any day, your mind can be triggered by old wounds, Satan’s demons, bad habits, or just something someone said, and the next thing you know, your mind is reeling out of control.

 It can feel like hundreds of pinballs are all dropping into the machine at once and you can’t figure out which one to hit first. 

 THIS is what your thoughts can look like in an unrenewed mind.  

 Whether your toxic thoughts are negative, fearful, anxious, or angry, how you deal with them can be the difference between a quiet game of solitaire or a chaotic game of pinball.

 It’s been said that we get bombarded by more than 50,000 thoughts a day. But there’s a difference between those thoughts that give you life and the thoughts that are sucking the life right out of you.

 It’s my hope to help you say goodbye to fear and hello to faith. Goodbye to chaos and hello to calm. Goodbye to confusion and hello to clarity… okay, you get the picture.

 So let’s dive into the four steps that will help you get control of those thoughts before they take control of you.

 Step #1: Reveal

In this step, you’re actually not going to focus on the pinball, but rather the trigger. 

 You want to better understand WHY you’re reacting to certain people, thoughts and situations.  

You see, it’s tempting and easy to blame others for triggering us, thereby making it their fault and their responsibility for controlling YOUR thoughts and emotions.

 When the truth is, you can’t trigger something that isn’t there. To stick with the pinball analogy, if there’s no ball, there’s nothing to set into motion. 

 This is where you’ll want to deal with the stuff lying beneath the surface—the past hurts, old wounds, neglected traumas, unfulfilled dreams, and insecurities. These are all things that make it so much easier for you to get triggered.

 Your job is not to control the triggers around you. It’s to deal with what's going on inside of you. So allow God to REVEAL what He needs to reveal.

 Step #2: Refocus

You can throw your hands up in the air and blame everything in your life on the out-of-control balls, or you can apply the principle found in 2 Corinthians 10:5: “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”

 My friend, don’t let your thoughts run free like a bully on a playground. It is your mind—it’s your job to direct it. 

 When my mind is going in a wrong direction, I am proactive in giving what God is revealing over to Him. This doesn’t mean that I just ignore something and pretend it’s not there. But it does mean that we are to be intentional about the focus of our own thoughts.  

 Step #3: Rethink it

Once you’ve captured that thought, stop and ask yourself: Is this thought helpful or harmful to my mental and sp