Affirmations and your mind
One of the simplest and most effective ways to invoke change into your life is by using affirmations. Affirmations by definition is something declared to be true; a positive statement or judgment.The majority of individuals who are negative or depressed tend to have negative thoughts or opinions of themselves. By feeding negative affirmations into your subconscious mind you are literally feeding your own misery. Ever notice how when you fall into a negative or depressive mood, it just seems to multiple it's ability to create more misery? Then you find a moment of happiness that makes everything seem to be better. That is until your mind reminds you that you are miserable and depressed. Over time it becomes extremely efficient at making sure that you are constantly depressed.
Your subconscious mind is there to make your conscious desires come true. It takes the conscious choices that you have made all your life and uses it as the plot of your own personal movie of your life. Ever notice how the super positive people that always seem to be happy don't complain about their day or life? They are always talking about how great something is/was, and what a wonderful experience they just had. Most people wish that they had experiences like that.
Negative people that would have had the exact same experience would describe the experience as horrible. Their focus is on the negativity that happens in their life and choose to remember all the small things that ruined the near perfect experience. Try it now if your not sure....
Remember back to the the last time you stayed in a hotel and what is the first thing that comes to mind? You might be biased by the topic so make a list of all the things you can remember and note if they were mostly positive or negative. Hopefully you answered that they were all positive and you can continue to be the positive person that you are. For those that score more to the negative side or balanced, try using affirmations to start changing your perspective.
To tell your self to just stop thinking about negativity or being depressed, will only move the little monsters into the next room to add up into an overwhelming mob that will sooner or later come back at you all at once. Dealing with the negativity as it comes up by trying to rationalize it can help resolve the current monster, but if that's your only method you probably already realized that there is an endless supply of the little guys. Why not give yourself a choice between choosing between negativity and positivity?
"I can choose to be positive rather than negative? If it was that simple I would of done it it by now..." would be a typical response.
The problem is you have already told all the positive choices "NO, I choose feeling miserable" and are only left with negative/depressive moods. The reason why affirmations are so great is that you can start giving your mind positive affirmations back that can change your life for the better.
You might be overwhelmed by daily chores or tasks, causing yourself to procrastinate or become negative. After a while you dread the task so much that you become borderline evil when forced to do it. By simply using an affirmation to tell your mind that you want another choice, you can start getting the positive self you truly desire.
"I love getting things done!"
"I know that the sooner I get started, the sooner I will see results."
The more you fill yourself with positive affirmations the less room there will be for negativity.
"What affirmations should I use?" you're hopefully asking yourself by now.
Below is a wonderful site that can offer a wonderful explanation of the actual creation and use of affirmations, along with a tremendous list of useful affirmations. The site is completely free to use and the site creator takes great pride in her work. I am big in giving credit where it's due and not to copy paste others material, so if you need the resource it's a great place to start. The two above affirmations are two favorites of my own.
9 Rules for Creating Perfect Affirmations
Hopefully this has helped a few in making a decision to start making a positive change in their life. It is as simple as happy thoughts, followed by happy decisions.
Running on Autopilot
It amazes me how many individuals are fine with running full tilt with their subconscious on autopilot. They put nearly zero conscious effort into their actions and seem like a broken record. Repeating the same response or action over and over again. Never seem to be happy or sad. Always seems like there is just a neutral expression on their face. Some will say these are the signs of many hundreds of different disorders out there. Yet what does it mean in my opinion? They are giving up on conscious effort.
You might be familiar with the concept that at times while you are driving or walking along and all of a sudden you don't remember any part of the driving for the previous seconds, minutes, or hours even for some. This is because the subconscious mind knows how to do the action without any conscious input. We have given all our conscious answers prior and the mind doesn't need us for input until something comes up worth bothering you about. I believe that we have become so accustomed to running on autopilot that we have lost the most important part of an individual. The conscious mind.
The conscious mind is the part of us that uses reason to deduct the truths and beliefs. Once we have decided these beliefs/reasons, our subconscious will take this as our decision for what we want when we run in autopilot again. Consciousness is the ability to not only make choices, but to change them. The greatest ability we have available to us, is free will. The ability to decide our action/reaction.
Not only does our decisions determine what kind of subconscious programming we run off of, but it can also offer insight into a deeper part of yourself. Your subconscious mind is capable of handling millions of processes all at once, while the conscious mind can handle on average 5 things, + or - a couple. So when your subconscious brings up a question or decision for you conscious mind, it has probably already made thousands of decisions based off your programming to get it to the most likely choices you want. Wouldn't it be great to discover what causes your mind to bring up those negative feelings or thoughts? To discover what makes your mind choose these, out of all the infinite possibilities in there. That's what we are here to do. Making our own choices on our own conditions.
Here was one of my first "AHA" moments. As as ridiculous it sounds I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that haven't figured it out yet. Maybe everyone has and that's fine as well. It still explains what general ideas I am trying to get to come out on this site. Anyway.... onto one of my first AHA moments.
I was going over what makes me happy, something that I'm sure every book on this topic brings up at least once, and realized that they always ask you to remember in your past to a happy time. It always focuses on the stimulate a "reaction". I know creating a stimulus to get the reaction you want is the easiest way..... but is it really?
I then came to a discovery that I should have learned/or remembered from childhood I'm sure. Why do you have to have a trigger to get a reaction or state of mind? I simply chose my action of "I want to feel happy" and my reaction was just that. I didn't have to trigger an emotion from using memories or making up a scenario that would result in them. I simply chose to have the feeling. Not a pretend you are a happy moment. It was a genuine feeling of happiness. The more I ask of that emotion, the more I would get.
"Yippee Yay" for you... you might say, but for me it is an amazing discovery. I can have an individual walk in to my office that I don't really enjoy dealing with asking for help, and then change my feeling of frustration or dislike to one happiness. It is then easier to deal with the problem and not the person.
Back to the topic at hand..... running on autopilot. This technique of choosing an emotion that differs from your normal one is an amazing way to turn off autopilot. Your subconscious will be thrown for a loop by having you interrupt its normal programming. It might even start to surprise you, what your subconscious can do when you tell it to do something.
Start challenging yourself when you start to feel yourself go into auto pilot. Change it up, or be more aware of your surroundings.
Imagination and belief
The power of imagination has been highly undervalued in my opinion. The world that we live in today has schooled us into using a logical minded approach to life. Although this had led to amazing growth and prosperity for some, it has also turned us into short sighted worker robots. Creativity shines in only a few that can grasps its true power and potential, while the remaining live off the false imagination portrayed by movies, games, and technology. We now experience others imagination and require no effort of our own.
I like a great movie just like anybody else, but when is the last time that you took the two hours that you would of spent watching a movie, to make your own in your imagination? If you're like me, or I should say like I was, you might say that "I can't visualize". I was alarmed to find as I started researching peoples opinions online, that a lot of people had the same problem. What shocked me even more that there was a mounting response that some people couldn't visualize. That they weren't a visual person and couldn't visualize in their mind. I was honestly worried that I would have to accept that this might be true.
Gladly, after quite a lot of more searching and a growing interest into my mind, I found that anyone and everyone can visualize. For most people this is a right side of the brain function and one that most people stop using as they grow older. Our schooling is mostly logically based and built on not the most efficient concept for learning. The people with the best memory and recall abilities are people that can visualize well. Business owners that have made fortunes are not the ones with the best schooling. They are the ones with the better imagination.
Look at a child that immerses themselves into a world that they create with their imagination. They can live in this world for hours, and when you asked them what they were doing they can take just as long describing their wonderful experience. Why is it that we lose this joyous ability as we get older? We blame the lack of time and our busy lives, yet we still find time to stare at TV's and monitors every day. We get our creative fix through this technology, as well as getting to experience the pleasant emotions created by them.
Why should I care so much about having an active imagination you might be asking? Let me give you an example from a psychologist from the turn of the previous century named Émile Coué. He gave the example of imagining a plank 30 feet long and one foot wide sitting on the ground. Ask anyone to walk from one end to the other and they easily could. Now raise this same plank that you easily walked across to an alarming height and what would the result be? Most people wouldn't even make the attempt, and some who would, would fall. Why is it that the exact same task can have two completely different outcomes? Émile Coué believed as do I, that it is the power of imagination and your belief.
When you are at a great height your imagination tells you that if you walk across the plank at this height you will fall off. You see yourself falling and injuring yourself and you believe that it can happen. Now that you have this belief in your mind, if you do try to cross, there is a good chance you will fall. Construction and Iron workers can walk beams and girders less than half a foot wide and never fall. Simply because they believe the can.
Lets look at another example of the imagination and how power it can be in making your reality. If you look back at a lot of the wonders of the world and ask how they were able to build such beautiful structures. They didn't have the complicated math that we have today or computers to aid in their design. They had nothing more than paper and their imagination. They created these wonders in their imagination and believed that it was possible to make it happen.
Hopefully by now you are starting to see how important your imagination is in giving you the ability to make changes in your life. Your imagination is the reality you can have. You just have to believe in ones imagination.
The old saying " a picture is worth a thousand words" is why imagination is so much more powerful than positive self-talk. Start by creating a self image of yourself as you are now. See what comes to your imagination as you see your self image. Where any of the thoughts of yourself negative? Such as weight, skin problems, confidence, or any other fault you might see? If so, realize now that your negative beliefs are what defines you as yourself. Let me try to clarify.
If you said for example, "I am fat" then by stating that as your belief it creates a negative self image. You simply see yourself as that fat person and since you accept that as your truth, that becomes your reality. Ever notice how the more you focus on your weight the harder it is to lose any? Could it be that you imagine eating just a little too much and gaining because of it? Maybe you tell yourself that your metabolism is slow?
Start erasing those negative thoughts and start creating a positive image of yourself. See yourself as you wish to be. Visualize a more confident you. Accept yourself for who you are right now, and be comfortable with that thought. Because once you remove the negative perspective of yourself, you can make the positive changes you want.
Not believing in your imagination can give the exact opposite results that you want. You might be able to lie to others, but you can't lie to yourself. Your mind works off of your beliefs you have. Once it no longer has to fulfill your negative beliefs any more, it can focus on making positive ones come true.
Anchoring negativity to loved ones
I was reading a topic on how people attach negativity to their loved ones. Over time if you aren't aware you can start to over write the good things about a person and be left with mostly negative reactions to a person. I have an amazing relationship and wanted to discover if at some level, I did attach negativity at times. My findings were astonishing at how easily you can attach pointless garble to someone you care for.
I came home the next day and started to pay attention to how I would react to my family when I got home. When I first walked into the house, I noticed that there were bags from school laying at the entrance. I then realized that I instantly triggered a frustrated response, as it was known that your bag doesn't belong there. I normally would of called the guilty party to resolve the issue, but this time I left it alone.
The next instance of negativity I realized was the list of things that needed to be done. From supper to cleaning, to letting the dogs out. It wasn't a rage or anger by any means, but it wasn't happy thoughts. When I then interacted with my wife, I then had the list of things that needed to be done and the bag lying on the floor, come into my mind. I was quite shocked that those were the first thoughts when I saw my wife. It wasn't how was she doing, although I would get to that sooner or later, it was on pointless tasks and a little bit of the frustrations from work coming out.
How did I become so mundane that I focused more on the little pointless "to do's" then actually interacting with my family? How many times have you had to come home to something that you didn't want to deal with, and did it in a happy "oh I'm so lucky there's a mess to clean up!" Probably not many. But what benefit does this offer by focusing on really what are unimportant issues.
From then on I decided that I would monitor what feelings/reactions I had anchored to my family/friends. When I look at my wife I make sure I remember the love, respect, consideration of how she is doing. The same goes for the rest of the family. If I notice myself have a negative response when I interact with a person at the start. I will detach those feelings/thoughts/ by thinking about how they are doing. See what they are feeling like. By focusing my energy onto them and their well being, the negative issues disappear.
The next amazing result of caring more about how they are doing, usually results with them being in a better mood. Your child then when reminded of the bag forgotten will usually be more than happy to pick it up, or will help out without a power struggle. You might also find that you are more happy, since your focus is on the positive things in your life.
The little mundane tasks are now just that. Tasks that need to be accomplished, but without any regard to who or when then need to be done by. I have learned that any task done with negativity will only result in more negativity. I also strongly believe that others will follow your model without even realizing it by following your example subconsciously. So make sure it is a positive approach.
There a million little things that make your life enjoyable. Don't let the negativity start to replace all these little things that used to make you happy. It will end up in costing you your happiness, or worse yet, your relationships.