Control Your Thoughts And You Control Your Life
Considering your thoughts affect how you feel, which in turn affect the actions you take and thus the results you get, clients will ask me how they can feel better when events set them off on a downward spiral of negative thoughts.
If you don’t take control of your thoughts you can begin to feel imprisoned by them and at their mercy. Nothing makes you feel more helpless and down-hearted than thinking you can’t control your mental thoughts and how they make you feel. When you think and feel negatively, you will usually behave in ways that reinforce your negative thoughts. Once you reinforce those negative thoughts with your behaviour you’ll become even further stuck in this rut. So how do you break out of this negative pattern?
If you’re having negative thoughts on a regular basis then your life and happiness will be suffering as a result of it; it’s time to take control of your thoughts. Your thoughts, the silent self-talk that takes place in your mind, are very much in your control. The problem we humans face is that we let the thoughts run on auto-pilot rather than seizing control over them.
Your brain might have become accustomed to certain thought habits and the only way to break those is to break the pattern. The less you repeat a certain thought pattern, the less you will feel compelled to repeat it, meaning over time, you can eliminate that thought pattern from your mind completely.
How To Use Affirmations To Break Negative Thinking Habits
Decide now that you are going to take conscious control over what you silently say to yourself so that you (the conscious mind) are selecting the record you are playing in your head rather than letting the DJ (the subconscious mind) play whatever he wants. Then, each time you hear the DJ playing a negative record that makes you feel low, have a positive record to replace it with.
Have some positive self-affirming statements ready prepared that you can utilise any time you need and store them in your phone or somewhere else accessible. Example affirmations are: ‘I am in control of my life’; ‘I feel myself becoming happier each day’; ‘I am in the process of attracting my soul mate’; I am a wonderful mother’; ‘I always make great decisions’.
Repeat these statements to yourself as often as you can, but especially first thing in the morning and last thing at night; this way you set yourself up for successful living each morning, and end every day by giving your brain positive instructions to process whilst you’re sleeping. Programme your mind well and your mind will lead you to the opportunities you need to grasp to achieve your desires.
Shad Helmstetter, in his book, What To Say When You Talk To Your Self, mentions repeating each affirmation three times before moving on to the next one. I absolutely advocate this as you feel a noticeable difference in your body and self-belief between the first repetition and the third one. By the third time it feels much more real…and that is the key with affirmations. The more you believe in them, the better they work. Over time they will feel more believable to you so don’t let the fact that they feel awkward and fake at the beginning, stop you. This will change with consistent repetition.
It doesn’t matter how far from the truth your affirmations feel right now; their purpose is to programme your mind with what you DO want in life so that you consciously and subconsciously work towards them becoming a reality. Remember, your mind works on the instructions it is given and this shapes your entire life.
