Dealing with Negative Thoughts--the Bogeymen of Personal Growth
Every good self-development program teaches the importance of maintaining a positive perspective. But when you first begin to practice focusing on the good that you desire, chances are you’ll run smack into a stream of murky thoughts and images rising from some bedeviled corner of your mind. They take the shape of doubts, fears, pictures of future failures, and memories of failures from the past. And like the bogeymen small children see lurking in nighttime shadows, the negative images produce a lot of unfounded fears.
“Am I canceling out all the positive images I’m trying to create?” students will ask. Or they’ll say that they just can’t maintain their positive thoughts and ask if they’re hopeless cases. The happy answer to both questions is a big, resounding ‘No!’ For many reasons, positive images of the good you desire have enormously more power than your doubts and fears. And the fact that everybody faces the same challenge means the backlash of negative thoughts is normal.
More than that, the backlash is a kind of gift, to be welcomed. What you’re actually seeing are patterns of thought and layers of belief that were formerly invisible to you. Instead of fearing or fighting them, realize they’re simply showing you aspects of yourself that you have now chosen to change. They’re a kind of snapshot of the images that ruled you without your awareness up until now. They aren’t you; they’re only habits of thought that you can discard now that you see them as the unserving patterns that they are.
To lessen their appearance requires only two things. First, rather than judging yourself for producing them, just acknowledge their content as thoughts you no longer wish to entertain. Look at them with curiosity and detachment, as if you’re looking at an old photo of yourself that you never saw before. If you feel guilty about the content for any reason, forgive yourself with all the love and compassion you can summon. You didn’t choose the negative viewpoint; you acquired it. Because you’re aware of it now, you’re free of its power to unconsciously direct your choices.
Secondly, rather than attempting to analyze the negative thought, belief or image and trying to ferret out its cause, simply refocus on the thoughts you prefer in its place. The more frequently you do this, the faster your preferred thoughts and images will become your new ‘normal’—and your new reality.
The process of change is like the process of dying cloth a different color. When you first dip it in the dye bath, the cloth takes on a pale tint of the new shade. But every time you wash it in the new color, more of the new hue remains. Finally, all its fibers are fully and permanently transformed.
Don’t be concerned that the colors of your old thoughts bleed through for awhile. Just keep dipping into your new hues. Before you know it, you and your world will be beautifully transformed.
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Susan K. Minarik is the author of “Winning the Tomorrow Game: How to Discover and Create the Life of Your Dreams.”
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The Power Of A Single Thought.
Lately I have been taking some time off from studying books on leadership, finance and the betterment of Humanity, to engage my mind in the relaxation of reading a few fictional novels, and what I have discovered is this. I have noticed that my mind works differently when reading and establishing thoughts on leadership or finance, as it processes things more on the side of task, function, action and goals, which is the left side of the brain. But interestingly, as I come home from a nights lecturing and begin to wind down in my hotel room, I find I'm denying the temptation of the TV to sit down to continue my absorption in this world of fiction and imagination.
John Lennon in his classic well remembered and loved lyric, 'Imagine...it's easy if you try' is a perfect truth, which was being manifested for me as my mind and imagination began to form vivid pictures and mindscapes of literally everything that was being described in the book I was reading. So powerful was this experience that I nicknamed it 'Mind TV' because the experience was so real and vivid, and there was seemingly no real difference from television or a movie except that my mind produced the vision with more clarity, reality and in a three dimensional world.
I began to think and imagine what the mind was doing in gathering the information from parts of my memory, to display on the screen of my mind this vivid reality. One scene was in the Arctic region, another in Rome, another on a 18th century whaling vessel, another in a supersonic jet travelling at Mach 3, but it made no difference to my mind as it simply flashed around my memory banks to retrieve the information from whatever source I may have seen it in my life, to display it full reality on the screen of my mind. So real was this that I was watching a DVD movie of one of the books I had read, and there was a scene developing when I suddenly said to my wife, 'they've cut out a scene, they've missed out an incredibly important bit'. We went back over it a couple of times when I realised that I had read it in the book, and I was blown away that I could not tell the difference between the scenes of this movie, which I had also seen before, and the scenes that had been vividly created and displayed by the ingenious imagination of my mind.
God has given the power of thought, imagination and focus to us through His creative process, for us to engage thought toward the attainment of riches, the development of things, and to bring aid and resources to the poor and needy. As humans we have been given the ability to think and imagine what the world, or more to the point OUR world could be like, but the tragedy is that most of us don't give even a few seconds a day to a sustained creative THOUGHT, let alone a disciplined approach, we simply run our lives on AUTO PILOT.
The power of a single thought aided by imagination and focus can produce limitless potential. Transportation - an engine - an automobile - an airplane; there are many examples we could describe, as progressions of thought have been allowed to take shape and manifest into reality. You see the power of thought and imagination has no limits or boundaries to its ability to CONCEIVE, it is only blocked by our ability to BELIEVE.
A bible verse out of the Book of Hebrews, chapter 11 verse 1, says 'That faith is the substance of THINGS hoped for, the evidence of THINGS yet seen.' There is a popular expression around that says, 'THOUGHTS CREATE THINGS' and I believe that in this verse above is the expression of Gods intended creative purpose for us. That in the concentration of a prominent thought, where focused discipline is used over time, faith will engage the creative substance to produce concrete EVIDENCE that we are on the road to fully attaining the THINGS hoped for, and in time will literally produce into the real world, your THOUGHT, your HOPE, your DREAM.
The creative substance is not intimidated by how big your dream is, or how much money you desire to equip you for your intended dream and purpose. One Million Dollars or One Billion Dollars is no different when speaking to uncreated substance, it all relies on our ability to THINK, IMAGINE and BELIEVE.
Albert Einstein said, 'Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions'. What attracts you to life? Is it the hope of riches, the plight of the needy and the poor? What THINGS do you think about? IMAGINATION and the POWER of a single THOUGHT can make a world of difference.
IMAGINE all the people living life in PEACE - you may say that I'm a DREAMER, but I'm not the only ONE.
THINK ABOUT IT.
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Ian Fisher is owner of TheFi5hFinance.com and writes on a variety of subjects. To learn more about this topic Ian recommends you visit: TheFi5hFinance.com
