Book Review: Tame Your Thoughts

Title: Tame Your Thoughts

Author: Max Lucado

Date: 2025

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

ISBN: 978-1-4002-5624-2

Quote: "Thoughts begin to bray when we wake up and refuse to shut off until we sleep." 

Fair disclosure: I received a free advance review copy of this book, the document before the final editing and publication, in exchange for an honest review. So here is an honest review.

It's Lucado. Christian readers have probably read at least one of his books. At telling stories and polishing phrases that turn our thoughts back to God and Christ and Salvation, he has no living equal. He is one of those authors whose books don't need to be reviewed. They're announced. A new one's coming out this fall! You'll like it! 

You will, too. But the odds are against your learning anything from it that you didn't already know. 

For the very young, the idea of taking control of thoughts may seem like a novelty. That's because, for my generation, it was so completely run into the ground in the 1980s that publishers haven't wanted to touch it in recent years. 

This book contains fresh new stories and some updated language but it's basically a recap of what we all heard (and did or did not learn) in the 1980s. If we want to focus on our emotional "feelings," trying to control our conscious thoughts, to filter out what produces unwanted "feelings," may help.

May help. Helps some people. Does not help others. Totally does not work for others.

By the mid-1990s neurological science had an explanation for this. Our brains route electrical impulses around different circuits of neurons. Some thoughts are routed around parts of our brains that process emotions. Consciously thinking logical thoughts does not  stop these thoughts running through our brains. Other thoughts are routed through parts of our brains that process facts, numbers, physical structures, etc. Our emotions don't engage closely with these thoughts.

In some cultures, processing more of our experience through the facts-and-figures circuits in the left brain is prized as a sign of "maturity" (these circuits are better developed in older people, poorly developed in children). In some cultures, it can be seen as masculine and disliked when it develops in women--"She's so detached. She has no 'feelings.' She's cold, judgmental, obnoxious..."  Both of these cultural patterns are present in the United States today. This has been cited as one reason why so many women feel "depressed."

Thinking rationally about how to deal with a situation, rather than curling up in the fetal position and screaming, is something mothers do. It is not "masculine." Neither is it "feminine." It is something men like to believe they do more effectively than women, though statistical measures clearly show that women do it more effectively than men: Men are more likely to abandon children, run away from what they call "failing" marriages, quit jobs or fire employees, get drunk or use drugs, have heart attacks before age 80, take to fisticuffs when they're not "winning" a quarrel, and do many other things that nonverbally scream "I CAN'T DEAL WITH THE WAY I FEEL ABOUT THIS!!!" than women are. Women are more likely to cope with situations even if they say they feel "depressed" by them. 

One of the situations in which "taming our thoughts" can help is when women persistently tell themselves, "I don't need A's, B's, and C's approval." They may want those people's approval, but if they want to be free from "depression," or to finish works of art, or raise healthier children, or earn higher salaries, or whatever else more than they want those people's approval, they'll be just fine until A, B, and C come around. 

However, regardless of gender, reacting to more and more situations logically rather than emotionally is something people learn to do more efficiently as we grow older. 

The gender connection may have some tenuous relation to some biological facts, but it seems to be primarily a learned behavior. In many (not all) cultures, boys learn that they're expected to suppress emotions associated with feeling weak or less competent--fear, sadness, frustration, regret. Girls learn that they're expected to suppress emotions associated with feeling empowered or more responsible--anger, determination, impatience, lust. Somewhere between age 5 and age 25 most people learn to stifle the set of emotions they're expected to stifle. In cultures that have different expectations associated with gender, or with other traits, most people learn to stifle the emotions they're expected to stifle there.

Is this all bad? No. One of the ways we learn to route our thoughts through the logical rather than the emotional parts of our brains is by learning skills and using tools to deal with situations. A toddler who comes to a locked door has no way to deal with its feeling of frustration better than lying on the floor and bawling. Older children don't even think of lying on the floor and bawling when they come to a locked door; they know how to use keys. When we feel less of the emotions we did not enjoy feeling as children, only rarely are we suffering from blocked emotions that needed to be expressed. There are still a few men out there who would feel better if they let themselves cry about things like the loss of their grandparents, and some women who would feel better if they gave themselves permission to say "This is what I"m paying for and what I insist on" or "This is what I want to do in bed," but most of the time, most of us aren't feeling the emotions children would have felt because we've learned the logical, physical, mathematical ways to solve the problems that make children so emotional. Instead of feeling frustrated by our parents' rules about when lights should go off and what music should be played, we have our own homes with our own rules. Instead of feeling fear that we won't be able to swim across the pool or make an effective speech, we've learned the skills that allow us either to do those things or to avoid situations where we'd be expected to do them. Instead of spending money on impulse and feeling bad when we run out, (most of us) have learned to make a budget and stick to it. 

But for some of us this leaves some areas where neither thoughts nor emotions seem to be serving us well. Lucado discusses some of the common ones: anxiety and worries, paralyzing guilt, lack of joy, obsessive lust, a sense of being "overwhelmed," physical or emotional pain, fear of rejection even by God, general discontentment. 

Can we tell ourselves things that help dispel these thoughts? Some of us can. 

For others, self-talk doesn't work. We may be feeding the recommended self-talk in through the logical part of the brain, but our consciousness is still bouncing around the same emotional circuits, unimpressed by pep talks from ourselves or others. 

One thing that may help young people, or young souls, or the young at heart, is allowing time for the corrective thoughts to work. We can form better mental habits. We can let a passion for ice dancing or wood carving drive out obsessive food cravings. We can mature from a teenaged "pistol" who pops off at a glance or a word, into a wise elder who thinks things through and rarely says or does anything on an impulse. We can mature from lust-raddled omnisexuals into peaceful, productive postsexuals. But these things don't happen overnight. Building a cerebral circuit that actually routes brain activity onto a bypass above those emotional circuits from the past may take a year or two. The immature student who seems stuck in a habit of crying and giving up rather than thinking things through and learning has a problem. The immature teachers who expect that problem to be solved this year have a more serious problem. 

Another thing that is likely to help is the rule: FIX FACTS FIRST. FEELINGS FOLLOW. Unwelcome thoughts are likely to come from situations where we're trying to fix feelings without fixing the facts. It can be productive to think of unwelcome thoughts or unwelcome feelings as symptoms of the physical conditions that really need to be fixed. Are anxious thoughts a symptom of a nutrient deficiency? After the initial exhaustion and muscle stiffness have been broken through, does physical movement restore energy and joy? How much do confession and restitution do for thoughts of guilt and unworthiness? While addicts, their pushers, and pharmaceutical companies cling to the fantasy of a quick chemical fix for thoughts and moods, real cures tend to be gradual. Some celiacs feel an intense "high" just from relief from gluten reactions, as soon as we've eliminated gluten (and glyphosate) from our bodies, but the complete recovery from celiac disease that flips the celiac trait into a super-power may take a year or more.

Whatever thoughts Lucado's readers want to tame, more has almost certainly been learned about that specific kind of thoughts than Lucado has taken the trouble to read or write. This first book may cheer and inspire them, which is well worth doing, but it may also be irritatingly inadequate. 

If you're looking for well-turned phrases and fresh, pithy stories, this book is well worth buying. If you're looking for help to tame specific thoughts that trouble you, this is at best a first book, an overview of the material you may want to study. If you're looking for help for a friend or family member, you need to be aware that, if Lucado's thoughts do help person tame those troublesome thoughts, taming thoughts tends to take longer than taming a wild horse.

If you're a Christian who has not found fellowship in physically attending church, this book is, like other books by other Christians, a letter from a classmate. It's a mistake to think of other Christian writers as teachers; they are fellow students trying to understand and apply what we've been given by The Teacher. Their books are no less valuable for that reason. Although I suspect I've read quite a lot more on this subject than he has, I still thank Max Lucado for this book.