4 Steps to Developing Habits that Empower YOU

Changing Negative Thought Patterns into Positive Thought Patterns: Change should always be a part of our life, with the understanding that we have the ability to change our perception and focus plus reaction to life. By doing this we will be able to change habits that are not going to provide us with a great life, great health, vitality and positive relationships into habits that will bring these positive wonderful things into our life:

We can often undertake for many varied reasons habits that are negative for us and surprisingly enough we can come up with a myriad of reasons to continue these habits without bearing much thought as to how they will affect us in the long term of our life.
One of the many reasons I chose Naturopathic medicine as my career path because I believed there were better options as to how we aged and that surely we must be able to age being healthy, active with the ability to still live a very functional life.
If we continue with our life path with habits that are not only bad for us and why are they bad for us you might say, well because they will rob us of having this healthy, active and functional life, for which I know for myself I do not want to be robbed of, hence early in my adult life I began changing my negative habits into positive ones and I must say I believe it has been truly worth every bit of effort because even though I am only 58 years of age, I am every bit as healthy and fit as what I was when I was younger if not more so.
I hope this article will help with giving you the inspiration and kick start to a healthy and more active life for you.
As children, each of us live with the barrage of commands from the adults in our lives: stop fidgeting, pay attention, sit up straight. For some, those commands became a consistent source of pain, maybe you heard words such as "You're stupid" or "You're lazy." As we grow into adulthood, we don't leave these remarks behind us, but instead, we continue them on our own, telling ourselves over and over again how inadequate we are.
Our negative thought patterns have the ability to reap havoc on our lives. Sometimes, we create our own reality by what we say to ourselves each day. For example, if we have one or two lousy things happen to us in the morning, we tell ourselves what a terrible day this is. Throughout the day, as we repeat this over and over, we begin to focus only on what has gone wrong. By the end of the day, we have convinced ourselves it was the worst day ever. If instead, we had accepted that the morning started off poorly, but the rest of the day looked promising and repeated this to ourselves all day, we would view our experiences differently and look for the good in what was happening.
And so it goes throughout our lives. When we continue to barrage ourselves with negative thoughts of ourselves, we tend to believe them. We view ourselves in this negative way.
Although difficult, you can change your thought process and change your outlook about yourself and about your life. This takes practice and work and dedication. But the results are definitely worth it. According to several psychologists, the process of changing negative thought processes into positive can take months, slowly, though; you will begin to notice a change in how you think.
Steps to creating a more positive thought process:
Be aware of your thoughts and what you tell yourself each day. Keep track of the negative on a piece of paper for several days. Notice how many times you put yourself down through your thoughts.

1. Use a piece of paper folded long ways down the middle. On one side, write down each negative thought. On the right side, write down a positive thought to replace it. Be as specific as possible. You might write down a correction to the thought, as well as a goal. For example, if you wrote down "I can't believe I lost my keys again, I am so stupid" as a negative thought, your positive side might include such phrases as "I am fine just the way I am" and "I lost my keys today, I am going to start hanging my keys on the hook each day so I know where they are." Your list should now include the most common negative thoughts you tell yourself each day.
2. Use a black pen and cross out each negative thought. As you are crossing them out, tell yourself these thoughts no longer have any control over you.
3. Begin to read the positive side to yourself several times each day. Each time you find yourself sliding back into your negative thoughts, tell yourself "STOP" and repeat your positive statement instead. As you begin to do this continually, you will notice the negative thoughts do not come as quickly as they used to. Keep a book with you and write down any new negative thoughts you may have. At the end of the day, go through the same process, exchanging, on paper, negative thoughts for positive ones. Cross out the negative and add your paper to your previous one, so that you can continue to feed yourself positive statements and goals each morning and evening as you read your list.
4. Make sure you complete this entire process each day. The act of writing down your positive thoughts will make them stronger; reading them out loud several times a day will make them stronger still. As you begin to see progress, note how many times each day you are writing down negative thoughts about yourself. If you are completing all the steps above consistently, you should begin to see your negative thoughts decrease. Maybe in the beginning you were constantly writing down negative thoughts and filled up pages quickly. Several weeks later, you might see that you are filling up only a half a page in the same amount of time you were filling up a whole page.
No matter what, keep it up!! This can be a long process. It took you years upon years to get the point you are at now: constantly barraging yourself with how you are not good enough. Don't expect to undo years of negativism in just a few days. Keep working at it and you will have a better and more positive self-image!!

Empowering You to Optimal Health Julie Doherty N.D