Today was a totally chill hike. I am off work for the coming week, so I got on the trail feeling completely relaxed with no deadline or pressure. It was awesome…AND beautiful. The trees are now almost completely bare and there was a frost on the ground when I got started that limned the veins of each fallen leaf.
One problem you can run into is that sometimes there are so many leaves, they obliterate the trail. For example, the trail is pretty clear in this picture: 
But because of all the fallen leaves, it’s not so clear in this one:
Thankfully, there happens to be a blaze (the blue painted rectangle) on a nearby tree, which you can see in the wider angle shot below:
The trail blazes allow hikers to stay on the trail even when the trail itself is not so obvious. It keeps them from getting lost. Which brings me to my theme this week, a concept I’ll call “brain blazes”.
Last week I talked about the concept of building new trails in your brain to accommodate new (more positive) thoughts to help you rock the single life. The thing is, especially in the early stages, it’s easy for these new trails to get covered up with the leaves of life: stress at work, holidays, and other events that make it easy to forget about practicing our new thoughts. And that’s why the blazes are so important.
What do brain blazes look like? Up to you. They might look like a sticky on your bathroom mirror, reminding you every morning that you ARE worthy of love. Or a time you set aside to journal every night about some new advantage you discovered about your singleness. Maybe it’s a circle of close friends you have asked to point out when you start arguing with reality. Or even committing to a weekly small group where you will be reminded of the difference between Truth and the stories we make up in our heads.
The trick is to set these blazes up right at the beginning as you discover and get excited about a new thought that works for you. I’ve found that once the novelty of a new thought wears off, my momentum ebbs and I forget all about setting up brain blazes for myself. There are a ton of creative ways to get started, some of which I already
mentioned. The more creative and fun, the more likely these intentional little trail markers will help you on those days when you are having trouble remembering your truth. And don’t stop at just one idea…put multiple blazes up around your new thought…you never know when one of those “trees” you painted a blue rectangle on will fall down. Vision boards, accountability partners, alarms on your phone….they can all be used to keep you on track as you intentionally change your thoughts about your singleness from soul crushing to joy giving.
This week, try to come up with a few ways you can concretely mark one of your new thought trails and put them into practice. I’d love to hear what you come up with!
