Do you ever consider why we do the things we do? Why do we do the good things we do and\/or why do we do the bad things we do?\u00a0 The answer is simple \u2013 we do what we\u2019ve thought about. And we think about what we\u2019ve been exposed to.<\/p>\n
What we surround ourselves with is what our minds take in. And once we\u2019ve been exposed to something and taken it in, our minds have the capacity to think about any of these things at any time. So why do our thoughts matter? Because our thoughts are what drive both our feelings and our actions, so if our thoughts are positive and good and focused on becoming successful individuals in every aspect of our lives, then our actions will follow suit.<\/p>\n
The most important thing we can do to control our thoughts is to control what we allow ourselves to be exposed to. Whether it\u2019s being exposed to content in the books we read, or movies we watch, or television shows we view, or the establishments we enter, or the music we hear, or the pictures we see, or the conversations we engage in\u2026all of these things, once we\u2019ve allowed ourselves to be exposed to them, can quickly become the subject of our thoughts.<\/p>\n
When we allow ourselves to be exposed to negative, destructive, or degrading things, we have opened the door to have these become the subject of our thoughts, which thoughts will lead us to do negative, destructive, degrading actions.<\/p>\n
When we allow ourselves to be exposed to positive, uplifting things that will lead us to become successful people in every aspect of our lives, we have opened the door to have these become the subject of our thoughts, which thoughts will lead us to do positive, uplifting, successful actions.<\/p>\n
Certainly, there are going to be times in life when we are exposed to something we didn\u2019t choose to be, such as overhearing a negative conversation on the subway or seeing a negative image on a billboard etc. In the world we live in today these are bound to happen occasionally (yet we can limit even these by taking every precaution to proactively avoid them such as driving a different route when you find a negative billboard image etc), however, if we have done everything in our power to only expose ourselves to positive things and we are purposefully avoiding the negative things, then we ought to have an arsenal of positive thoughts we can immediately call upon to force out a negative one when it comes to mind from one of these unavoidable exposures.<\/p>\n
If we want to be successful in every aspect of our lives then we have got to be willing to change our environment in order to ensure we are only exposing ourselves to the most positive: uplifting music, inspiring movies, motivational books, good conversations, wholesome activities, etc. A good environment breeds good thoughts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThoughts lead to acts, acts lead to habits, habits leads to character \u2013 and our character will determine our eternal destiny.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0 -Ezra Taft Benson<\/p>\n ~Amy Rees Anderson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you ever consider why we do the things we do? Why do we do the good things we do and\/or why do we do the bad things we do?\u00a0 The answer is simple \u2013 we do what we\u2019ve thought about. And we think about what we\u2019ve been exposed to. What we surround ourselves with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14893,395,14895,14898,14897,6288,14903,8432,14906,14904,14451,218,14907,14901,14894,14896,14908,14900,9225,10314,153,14899,14905,112,149,4108,14892,95,13691,14902],"class_list":["post-8402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-acts-lead-to-habits","tag-amy-rees-anderson","tag-character-determines-destiny","tag-control-your-environment","tag-control-your-exposure","tag-control-your-thoughts","tag-destructive-thoughts","tag-encouraging","tag-every-aspect-of-life","tag-evil-influences","tag-ezra-taft-benson","tag-failure","tag-force-out-negative-thoughts","tag-good-conversations","tag-habits-lead-to-character","tag-habits-of-highly-successful-people","tag-improve-your-thinking","tag-inspiring-movies","tag-motivational-books","tag-negative-thoughts","tag-positive","tag-positive-change","tag-positive-influence","tag-self-improvement","tag-success","tag-successful-people","tag-thoughts-lead-to-acts","tag-uplifting","tag-uplifting-music","tag-wholesome-activities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8402"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8404,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8402\/revisions\/8404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}