I am sure it is not the first time you have read about the grave consequences of negative thinking. The movie ¨The Secret¨ did really well at creating awareness around the impact of our thoughts on our lives. It has also been scientifically proven that our thoughts directly influence our lives and there is a wealth of information that can be found warning every one of the dangers of thinking negatively, and rightly so! Your thoughts affect your current health, your successes in life, your relationships, your finances, they influence everything. Your current reality is a mirror of the beliefs and thoughts you hold.
Just by changing the way you think, you can change your life. You have infinite power within you to influence your results and you would be naïve not to harness this power. Researchers have shown us that we have on average between 50 000 to 70000 thoughts a day! How many of those thoughts are empowering you and how many of those thoughts are limiting you? It becomes clearer every day that positive thinking is not a sheer luxury but a must if you want to feel fulfilled and happier in life.
The results you have in your life now are come from your past thoughts. Very often, past thoughts become a vicious cycle in undermining current and future results. For example, imagine you are struggling in your business, you are not aware but every second thought you have is something like `I will never be successful` or `my business is going to collapse in a few months´ or ´I am a failure, I knew it´. What really plays out now is that your thoughts connect to emotions, bad thoughts leads to bad feelings and you act on your feelings.
In this example, the business owner would make very different business decisions and take very different actions depending if he felt positive or not. Unfortunately, because he believes he will fail, he will most likely fail and he will mostly think that he was right too to be negative, which then reinforces this false belief and the cycle continues.
Because our thoughts are on automatic, most of the time we are not even aware we are having them. The first step is to become aware of the types of limiting thoughts you often have. Once you are aware of how many negative thoughts you have, you want to start to change the neurological patterns that have been formed. The more of the same thought you have, the more energy you are giving it and the more you are reinforcing that thought pattern. The neurons group and come together and are then more prominent in your awareness.
Simple Steps To Successfully Change Your Thought Patterns
• Identify – First you want to identify and acknowledge what types of thoughts you regularly have
• Awareness – The next steps is to create awareness around the thought. You want to understand where this thought/belief originates from. For all your negative thoughts, ask yourself if this is a belief or is it a fact, if it is a belief, how will you change it to empower you now?
• Replace – Now you want to replace this thought to one that is positive and will empower you.
• Repetition – You want to repeat the new thought in your mind so that now you are redirecting your energy to a positive thought and you are creating a new pattern. Every time you think that thought, you are reinforcing it.
You need to repeatedly re-direct your thoughts to the positive one every time. The substance that keeps the associated thoughts together doesn’t have unlimited supply so the good news is that after a lot of repetition, the old neurons start to disconnect and the new positive thought patterns replace it.
Change does not happen overnight and unfortunately, there is no magic pill you can take to see results instantaneously. It takes effort, time, commitment and perseverance, but with anything in life, these are the key ingredients to successfully make the changes and achieve what we desire.
You can also try:
• Distancing – this is when you just let your thoughts slip past you without giving too much attention to them at all.
• When you are aware that you are thinking negatively, tell the voice in your head ¨to shut up¨ or ¨sshh¨
• Do something active – If you feel like you are in a negative thinking rut and you can´t refocus, starting moving and do something active, this will help you to be distracted and change your focus for awhile.
Want 7 Simple Strategies to Triple Your Productivity? - Free Access to E-Course - - www.topresultscoaching.com
Kirstin is a Productivity Coach who is passionate about helping individuals to successfully achieve their goals and create their ¨ideal¨ life. She works with her clients to close the gap between where they are now and where they want to be, while supporting them to overcome their obstacles, develop key skills and a mindset geared for success.