what changes how we think

St Basil talks to us today about changing the way we think in A Year with the Church Fathers.

He says that people who fill their minds with trivial garbage throughout the day even find their brains spouting the nonsense at night while they sleep. And we can definitely identify with that, can't we? Haven't you gotten some horrible song stuck in your head and woken up at 3am with it on a loop in your mind? These things literally change the way we think. And if we're not careful, we'll find ourselves thinking nonsense and garbage.

But there is a great alternative. We can read, watch, listen to, and pay attention to things that change our minds in a good way. For instance, I recently listened to these YouTube videos: Story of a Soul and it changed the way I think about suffering. If you would like to learn more about what suffering means and how it can be a good thing, you might want to listen to those videos.

We can choose how our brains think. That's kind of amazing when you think about it. We can DECIDE how we think. And if we don't make good decisions, then someone else will make those choices for us... and we probably won't like what they choose.

So let's choose wisely.

God, thank You for giving us the ability to choose how we think.