Understanding Our Thoughts: How to Change the Way You Experience Life

lisalewis24
Nov 10, 2025
3 min read

By Lisa Lewis, Therapist for Midlife and Empty Nest Women

In my last blog post, Being a Victim of Circumstance: How Changing Your Thoughts Can Change Your Life, I talked about how we often attribute our feelings and results to the situations around us.

That post introduced the idea that what truly impacts our experience isn’t the circumstance itself — it’s our thoughts about it.

This week, we’re taking that concept a step further by diving deeper into understanding our thoughts — where they come from, how they influence our emotions and behaviors, and most importantly, how we can begin to change them.

Circumstances vs. Thoughts

Sometimes, without realizing it, we become victims of our circumstances. We believe that what’s happening around us — our finances, relationships, health, or work situations — determines how we feel.

But here’s the truth: What’s actually impacting us isn’t the circumstance itself… it’s our thoughts about the circumstance.

Let that sink in for a moment.

You might be thinking, “Lisa, what are you talking about? My circumstances are what cause me stress!” Hang with me — because this concept has the power to truly change your life.

How Our Thoughts Shape Our Experience

When I work with clients as a mental health therapist in Northwest Arkansas, I often teach a skill from a therapy approach called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

CBT focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thought patterns that lead to negative emotions or behaviors.

Here’s a simple example:

Let’s say you’re at work in Bentonville, and a coworker you’re usually friendly with walks right past you without saying “hi.”

You might think, “What did I do wrong?” or “Why is she mad at me? "Those thoughts make you feel hurt or offended, and later you might act coldly toward her.

Now, the circumstance (seeing a coworker who didn’t say hi) is neutral. But the thought you had about it — not the event itself — caused your emotional reaction.

If instead you thought, “She must have a lot on her mind,” you’d likely feel calm or neutral and respond warmly when you saw her later.

Same situation. Different thoughts. Completely different outcome.

Practicing Thought Awareness

We all have thousands of thoughts each day, and many of them run automatically in the background. When we start paying attention, we can decide which thoughts we want to keep — and which ones we’re ready to change.

For example:

“I always mess things up.”
“No one cares about me.”
“I’m not connecting with my adult children.”
“My husband doesn’t understand me.”
“I’ll never lose this extra weight.”

When we think these kinds of thoughts often, we reinforce feelings of discouragement or disconnection. But by learning to restructure our thinking, we can create new thought patterns that help us feel more hopeful and empowered.

Try this exercise:

Write down a few thoughts you’ve been having lately.
Identify the feeling that comes with each thought so you can understand the connection with how you are feeling with the thoughts.
Ask yourself, “Do I want to keep thinking this or Am I ready to drop this thought because it's not serving me?”
What would be a small believable shift in your thoughts that you could choose instead?

Even small shifts can make a big difference over time.

The Power of Practice

Learning to change your thinking takes patience and consistency — but the results are worth it. I’ve been doing this work personally for years, and it has truly changed my life.

If you practice consistently, you’ll start noticing that your moods, behaviors, and relationships improve in ways that feel natural and lasting.

This is the kind of transformation I love seeing in the women I work with here in Rogers, Bentonville, Fayetteville, and Springdale, Arkansas — especially midlife and empty nest moms who are rediscovering themselves and learning to build a more peaceful mindset.