Spiritual Tools for Hungry Souls

You have probably heard the saying:  Change your thinking, change your life.  To change our thinking, we just need to form new habits and practices around our thinking process.  But how do we do that?

While attending a class called Dynamics of Prayer with Dr. Tom Sannar, I learned about the NCTER Process.  This process is a self-observation method using a five-step process developed by Dr. Sannar.

I like to share his simple acronym to follow to make this new NCTER process easy to remember.

Dr. Sannar’s NCTER Process:

1. Name it
2. Claim it
3. Trace it
4. Erase it
5. Replace it

So, now that you know what each LETTER means, let me explain what each STEP means:

1. Name It. In order to change a thinking process, we must recognize it and ‘name it’.  To do this, we need to become mindful of the thoughts and emotions behind the thinking process.
2.  Claim It.  Take responsibility for the thought and emotion.  In this step, we release all blame and judgment and take dominion over the situation.
3. Trace It. When we trace the emotion back to the hidden belief, we allow the emotion to reveal the cause.
4. Erase It.  Now we can let go and erase the negative core belief.  We release our expectations and emotions behind the belief.
5. Replace It.  We now choose to replace the negative core belief with a positive thought, affirmation, or action.  Attaching a new positive emotion completes the process.

Let’s create an example to help us understand this process.

Say we feel fearful of our future money situation due to the Coronavirus shutdown.

1.  Recognize the fearful feeling and name it ‘Money Fear’.
2.  Take responsibility for the fearful thoughts, knowing that the thoughts are just thoughts and not necessarily reality.
3.  Trace this fear back to a time when we did not have enough money to pay our bills.  But remember that we lived through that situation with little harm to ourselves.
4.  Decide that this situation is not different, and does not need to cause us any harm.
5. Replace this fear with a new thought of affirmation:  My money needs are always met perfectly and completely now and in the future.

Maybe a sixth step is needed:  Rejoice!  Knowing that all is well and we are living in confidence through all situations.