Positive Mindset – Change the pattern, change your life!

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Change the pattern change your life!

You are unhappy and negative because of how you think.Your thoughts influence your feelings, your feelings influence your actions or behaviour. So change the way you think, and you can change your life.

 

Decide to be positive: 

We all have a choice, to be positive or negative, to be happy or sad, to be in a good mood or a bad mood, to love or to hate, to be a victim or to learn from our situation. What we need to understand is that even when we think we do not have a choice, we do, and it is that choice that colours our out look.

 

Do something that makes you happy: 

If you can, do something you enjoy to do, what ever it is, just do it and feel yourself starting to enjoy yourself, feel a smile, feel a happy feeling, feel a little bit of positivity entering your life.

 
Smile – fake it till you make it.

Put a smile on your face, even of you are faking it will made you feel happier and more positive. Try to keep smiling for about a minute. Amazingly the brain does not know the difference between a real and a fake smile. When we smile it has been found that our brain releases powerful neurotransmitters like endorphins and serotonin, these are our body’s natural happy drugs. Smiling also relieves stress, boosts your immune system and lowers your blood pressure.
Here is a ted video that you might like to watch.

Hidden power of smiling

 

Gratitude:

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. ~  see my pervious post ‘An Attitude of Gratitude’

 

Choose to be around positive people.

Surrounding yourself with loving, supportive, positive people is very important. If you don’t believe me find someone negative, down on themselves and everyone and everything. Listen to complaining about stuff, feel the stress and tension in and around them. Life is too short to spend time with people who bring you down, suck the happiness, life, and energy out of you. Negative people can destroy our self-belief, and our dreams, leaving you drained and in the gutter.
Positive people have an inspiring energy, they raise your spirits up, they motivate you, and increase the feel good factor.

 

Self-talk – Challenge negative thoughts or self talk. 

Have you ever stopped and listened to what that voice in your head is saying. It’s an unconscious chatter that many people hardly even notice it. I often have an inner battle with this voice, this voice I call my gremlin.
Once you become aware of this voice you will be amazed, it will keep yapping and yapping, and very rarely it is positive talk, so we need to train it, be aware and catch it in the act. You need to create your own positive thought patterns. The aim here is to make these new statements just as unconscious as the current negative ones, we do this by repetition, try to repeat the positive thought pattern for at least 68 seconds, allowing to anchor in the unconscious, keep doing this until the negative statement you are aiming at changes.

 

Think abundance not lack.

Instead of thinking half empty, think half full, look at the bright side.

 

Don’t allow the past doesn’t dictate your future.

Just because something happened in the past does not mean it will happen again.

Or if your past was great, you may. Be finding your present dull and bleak, then thinking to your future can be looking dull as well.
Or you lost someone special, and you are reliving the if only …..
Living in the past will rob you of a meaningful and fulfilling, happy present and future.Live in the now! There is only now. The past in gone, the future may never come, so enjoy where you are right now this second.

 

Keep a diary

Try to keep it positive, but if you use it to get things off your chest, or express how you feel, go back and have a look at it when some time is passed. I journaled a lot after my mother was told she was terminally ill and when she died. I have from time to time looked back on what I have wrote and I can see how far I have come. I also found an old diary from when one of my brothers died and I was able to see my progress thought the grief and I was able to identify times I had felt down, I saw a pattern of being extremely down six months after a bereavement, this helped me to cope.

But as I said try to be positive, what is good in life, what is happening, what are you planning, what did you see today tat was beautiful, or something funny. If you are arty draw something, even a big smiley face. Journaling will help you realise that you can find opportunities in negative situations.

 

Remember that life is a journey. It is your choice, how enjoy it, where you go, what you do. 

And remember ‘it’s better to laugh then to cry’

~ Nancy O’Connor

Spinning in circles in pure panic due to inner response to change

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Have you ever found yourself spinning in circles, in a panic not knowing what you are going to do in life next?

Something or someone just pulled the rug from under you?

Change is happening and you didn’t see it coming or you ignored it hoping it would pass but now you are in the middle of change and in a pure panic.

You have a choice, but no idea what is the right thing to do?

You have to do something but you do not see a path to take.

All you want to do is roll up and hide from the world.

In the last 10 years I’ve been there a few times!

Three very close bereavements, changing career, moving country, finishing a college degree, looking for employment, work related stress, made redundant, taking care of my terminally ill mother.

Yes, all very challenging times, but there were good things in between, but all of these situations have been a learning opportunity for me. Not that I took it that way when I was in the middle of the situations, but looking back at my ten year roller-coaster of life, I realise that life happens, change happens and many times we have no control over it, (one second of someone else’s life can change your life forever), but we do have control in how we react to the situation we are in, and in how we pick our selfs up and how we move forward.

Our inner response to a situation is key, key to our present and to our future state of mind, and this state of mind is what help form our actual present and future.

 

An Attitude of Gratitude

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An Attitude of Gratitude is a powerful tool to creating a happy life.

Gratitude is an incredible thing! Some believe that it may be the single most effective way to increase happiness.

I have engaged gratitude and appreciation in my life, and have found that it has help me through a few very difficult times over the last year.

We all come across situations where we just want to roll up in the corner and wish the world would disappear. I know how easy it is to do that, but I have learn that finding even the smallest thing in our darkest day can turn us around, and the light at the end of the tunnel gets a little brighter. Even during bad times, especially during the bad times, we should and need to focus on the good we have, whatever that may be.

Gratitude shifts your focus from what your life lacks to the abundance that is already present. In general people tend to take for granted the good that is in their lives, just focusing on the negative. Noticing simple pleasures in life brings you away from the feeling of lack, maintaining a high level of positive-thinking.

Happiness always comes from within yourself. It is not dependent on external things or on other people. If you think it is from external things or on other people you become vulnerable. Happiness is a journey not a destination, and If you wait until you arrive at a happy place, you may miss a lot of the joy on the way.

Behavioural scientists tell us that if we do something consistently for 21 days, it becomes a habit.

What to do, just write 3 to 10 things that you are grateful and appreciate, do this everyday for the 21 days, you’ll find yourself continuing pass the 21 days, I know I did. Don’t worry if you end up repeating yourself sometimes, just get writing.
Start the statement with ‘I am grateful and appreciate ……….’

It can be something as simple as:
‘I am grateful and appreciate the eyes i have to read this post!’
‘I am grateful and appreciate my life’
‘I am grateful and appreciate that it is not raining’
‘I am grateful and appreciate my loving friends and family’

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. —Denis Waitley