You Are What You Think…
Since we can’t change the world to suit us, we need to find ways to cope. Because everyone is different, different skills will help different people. We all need to try different things until we find the ones that work for us. I’m a firm believer that once we discover the coping skills we need, our lives are about to go BOOM!
You have probably heard “you are what you eat” but did you realize that even more important to our health is “you are what you think”?
My mentor likes to say our brains are like an oven…what you put in you get out. Put in crap and out pops fully cooked crap. (doesn’t that sound appetizing?) Put in yummy ingredients, and boom, there’s a cake, or muffins, or something else delicious and ready to share with the world. I love this analogy!
What you allow to inhabit your mind becomes your reality. When we allow negative thoughts to take over, we feel like we struggle with everything in our lives, because our thinking is out of balance. When we work to bring our thinking back to the positive side, life just flows more easily.
However, always being a Pollyanna and never acknowledging when bad stuff happens is just as bad — ignoring the bad parts of life doesn’t make them go away, in fact, they usually fester and become even bigger problems that explode! Just as you wouldn’t ignore that funny mole on your arm that keeps growing and growing, you shouldn’t ignore the bad things that sometimes happen either.
The trick is to find that happy balance, where you are both focused on the positive and able to deal with the negative. Most people are either on one side or the other, and some swing wildly from one side to the other on a regular basis.
It’s exhausting, once you have the balance figured out, to spend a lot of time with anyone who isn’t balanced and mentally healthy. So, once you decide to make these changes, you should try, where ever possible, to drag your friends and family along for the ride, so that they can enjoy the benefits, and it doesn’t drive a wedge between you.
So, once you decide to make these changes in your life, what’s next? What can you do to really shift your thinking and create the balance you crave? Well, I am glad you asked! There are a lot, okay an absolutely overwhelming number, of ways to create this change. I like to try two or three things to start, and see whether they fit with your life, and whether they are things you can see yourself doing long term, because at the end of the day, if you hate doing it, you won’t. What are my top three tools, you might ask? Read on…
Affirmations, visualization and journalling are all great tools to reset our thinking and create a new reality — to put different ingredients in the oven. Just remember, none of these is a “quick fix” and they will take time to really work. The payoff is huge, but they do involve commitment.
Affirmations are awesome for putting a new groove into your mind and creating new neural pathways. Repeat as often as possible throughout the day, preferably in front of a mirror, and keep going for three to six months and watch the magic happen as you start to believe!
Visualization is a form of meditation. Picture what you want to have happen, make it as detailed as possible (sights, sounds, smells, textures, what things feel like, the whole works, go crazy detailed) and allow yourself to be immersed in it. Just run it through your mind like a favourite memory. Once you finish the imagery, do it a second time. Then a third. Repeat this twice per day, morning and night, and watch how your thinking shifts to allow you to see the steps you need to take to get what you want — and how the universe provides you with the things you need in order to take those steps.
Journalling. I am a writer and journalling is what kicked this transformation off for me. The first few years, I don’t mind admitting that I slid back into listing the bad stuff and feeling sorry for myself more often than I would have liked. But, I kept going, and I kept learning, and I found a few ideas for things to focus on that really allowed me to turn journalling into a powerful tool for creating the destiny I wanted. Picking a topic you want to create a positive vibe around, and then focusing on the positive parts of that topic, is a great way to start to harness this power.
Give these ideas a try and see what happens!
If you want more great content like this, discover the FIVE best in-the-moment strategies for managing stress and calming emotions when life overwhelms you.
These are the exact methods that my private clients use to reduce their stress and anxiety — so they can have less drama and more success and happiness in their daily lives (plus, a few more ideas I spill the beans on!)
Learn more here https://tranquilitysoulspa.com/keys/
