"The mind is a powerful thing. It can take you through walls."
– Denis Avey
The mind can be your friend or a foe. Every day, we are constantly flowing with many thoughts and emotions that influence how we make decisions.
The mind, when constantly barraged with negative thoughts, will be your biggest obstacle to progressing forward with any of your intentions. If your thoughts tell you:
“I can’t do this; it won’t work; I’m not great enough,”
then you will be just exactly what you think.
Whenever you are in the negative mindset, you want to train your mind to shift from these self-inflicting thoughts to the positive side. Anytime you start doubting yourself, say:
“I’ll shift out of this negative mindset. I will succeed in what I desire.”
For example, I was once tasked to take on building a new yoga membership website. At the time, I only had experience with building general WordPress websites but had no experience with building an online community such as a membership site.
Immediately, my mind went into the mode of listing all the reasons why I might not be able to complete the project. My negative reasons included: I’m not qualified, I don’t have the experience, I don’t know where to start, I wouldn’t be good at it, so on and so forth. If I had continued to let my mind think negative thoughts... then that is exactly the direction the results would have ended up, just negative.
However, I simply told my mind to brush aside those negative reasons and think of new positive thoughts on why I would succeed with the project. These new thoughts included: I’ll be able to research the best membership site platform to install, I have great organizational skills to efficiently put together the yoga material, and I have a great track record with figuring out problems.
See... just a simple mindset shift will help you tremendously in moving forward with your intentions. When I simply reversed my thoughts, then I was moving towards a positive result.
It actually is that EASY. Trust me. Too many people complicate it by simply listing reasons why it wouldn’t work, but as I mentioned before, by doing so, you already are moving in the negative direction.
Key takeaway: Whenever you have negative thoughts, just shift your mindset away from those thoughts, and list out positive and action-able reasons why you will succeed in whatever task you do!
"First realize that your world is only a reflection of yourself and then stop finding fault with the reflection"
– Nisargadatta
MINDSET SHIFTS
Often, negative thoughts and setbacks come out of comparing yourself to other people. It’s important not to think about external factors. You can’t compare someone’s middle to your beginning.
Comparing yourself to external factors that are beyond your control keeps you from being centered, and to work hard and live the life you want, you have to stay focused, centered and balanced as much as possible.
Instead of comparing and being fearful and jealous when you see someone who is further along than you, why not celebrate their accomplishments and use it as inspiration?
List 5 people that you admire:
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POSITIVE REFRAME
List 5 negative thoughts that you have:
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How can you shift those negative thoughts into positive thoughts?
For example: “I don’t have any awards and my resume isn’t that impressive.” This is a state of mind. It can easily shift to “My resume is versatile and I have amazing life experiences!”
List 5 positive reframes:
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(Introduction photo courtesy of Morre Christophe found on Unsplash)