The Rev Spanky Moore is an Anglican minister, he wrote an aticle recently about Stinky Thinking, I thought it was worth republishing (with his permission of course!)

A few months back a terrible smell began to emit from inside my car. Now, I’ll admit, I’ve experienced some pretty bad mysterious odours in my Toyota over the years - rotting milkshakes, decomposing nappies, blue cheese wrappers - but this smell had taken things to an entirely new low. I spent the afternoon turning that car upside down trying to track down the culprit. Until I reached under the passenger seat, all the way up to my shoulders. My finger tips felt a plastic bag, which I slowly began to extract. And as I dragged it into the sunlight, the demon was finally unmasked: A sweaty, sticky bag containing a half consumed, month old, meal of DubaDuba Moroccan chicken.

Here’s the thing: Most people I meet up with have the equivalent of my rotten Moroccan hiding somewhere in their minds – a kind of “Stinky Thinking”. And basically it’s the sub-conscious negative self-talk that most people play to themselves throughout the day, like a broken tape recorder playing a crappy song stuck on repeat.

Sometimes our brains get stuck in this infinite mind trap, and we start to think the worst of ourselves, our abilities, and what others think of us. We get into the bad habit of talking to ourselves negatively, and rather than our self-talk being based on how things actually are.
If you go into work with self-talk saying things like: “I’m an imposter and everyone knows it. I’m probably going to fail, and I’ll be laughed out of the media business” it’s almost definitely going to have a pretty negative knock on consequence.

The writer of the book of Philippians put it likes this: “You’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”

And before Spring is done – I want to encourage you to do a spring clean of your mind. And instead replace your own stinky thinking with some realistic self-affirmation. You’ll be happier for it. You’ll do better in your work because of it. And you’ll actually like being with yourself. So get to it, and Spring Clean that sucker!