Harness the Power of Your Thoughts to Attain Fulfillment
Do you think about the power of your thoughts? Many people don’t. To these people, thoughts are just ideas that pass through their minds and are quickly forgotten. Thoughts, these people feel, have little or no impact on their lives, so why trouble yourself about them. If this sounds like you, you’re missing a great opportunity to achieve the life you want.
Thoughts are more than just ideas. They’re powerful entities that can impact your life dramatically. For example, they trigger the emotions and feelings that influence your actions. That’s heady stuff. Put another way, your thoughts are among the most powerful forces within you that are responsible for almost everything that happens to you. As our thoughts are, so are our lives.
Fortunately, though choice and determination, you can use the power of thoughts for your benefit. When you become more aware of and learn to let go of thoughts that hold you back, and cultivate more positive ones, you can live with greater joy and fulfillment.
Controlling Our Habitual Thoughts
To harness the power of your thoughts, you need to learn to control them—especially your habitual thoughts. These are critical. For many of you, however, your habitual thoughts are negative. So no matter how hard you try to make changes in your lives, negative thinking weighs you down. It often prevents you from doing the things that can benefit you the most.
For example, how many times have you had an inspired idea, only to tell yourself you couldn’t do it. Or, how many times have you wanted to try something but didn’t because of fear. You may be surprised by how much limiting beliefs and negative thoughts can sabotage your best efforts and prevent you from doing what you love.
Change those negative thoughts to positive ones and you can dramatically re-shape your life. Below are seven ways to change negative thoughts to positive ones:
- Meditate or do yoga — Yoga is a great way to regain focus by shifting your negative thoughts to your breathing. It’s also a great way to relax yourself and calm your mind. More important, yoga can help you stay in the present. Instead of thinking about the future or worrying about the past, it brings you back to now.
- Take responsibility for creating your life — Put another way, don’t play the victim. Even if things get really bad, there’s always a way out. You’re not stuck forever. You can make changes happen if you put your mind to it.
- Stop feeding your negative thinking — Often, when things go bad, we start feeding our negative thinking. That’s the worst thing you can do. Focus, instead, on the positive. For example, try surrounding yourself with positive people. That can help get you out of your negative spiral.
- Do something nice for another person — Doing something nice for someone else is a simple thing. But it’s a more powerful than you realize. For example, take some old furniture and refurbish it. Then donate it to the Salvation Army or to Good Will. It will take your mind off things and you’ll feel better for helping another person.
- Remember no one is perfect — Forget your mistakes. Unfortunately, we often don’t, and that’s a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Rather than dwell on yours, learn from them and use them to re-shape your thinking. Then move forward.
- Smile — This can be hard sometimes. Smiling not only changes your mood, but it also relieves stress. If you’re finding it difficult to do, shake things up by going somewhere or doing something that brings a smile to your face such as listening to an uplifting song or being around a playful animal. It doesn’t take much to flip that switch!
- List five things you’re grateful for — Being grateful forces you to appreciate what you already have. That’s why we have a section in our Life Coach-in-a-Book where we ask you to list what you’re grateful for. That’s how important we think doing this is! While making your list, try to connect with the feeling of gratefulness associated with each thing. Infusing it with feeling makes it real!
Doing the seven things listed above can help you change habitual negative thoughts into positive ones. By “training” yourself to eliminate habitual negative thoughts, you’ll take a concrete step toward harnessing the awesome power of your thoughts. Doing so can help you re-gain control of your life help you attain real fulfillment.
