“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” -Buddha

This is something I have really had my mind on lately! I have been working on thinking about what I am thinking about. It really makes a huge difference in my day…my attitude about what is happening for me, what I am doing, how much I am actually getting done. I work on not spending much time with what Joyce Meyer’s calls “stinkin. thinkin'” daily.

So what mindset shifts have I been working on to get things rolling so I can feel more fulfilled in my life? These can actually happen without physically changing anything in your life.

STOP Saying…

• I will do/be (blank) once I have (blank)- We have to stop thinking that we will change once we have the results that we want. I don’t know about you but to me, that is almost backward thinking. To get the results we desire, we have to change the way we are thinking, our words, and our actions first. So we should change this statement to I need to do/be (blank) so I can have (blank). It is truly our beliefs and actions that create our circumstances, not the other way around.
• Everything is either negative or positive- We have a habit of polarizing situations. In reality, everything is really balanced. Every situation that we experience is neither positive or negative until we attach our emotions and feelings to them. We do not want to be super negative, but we also don’t want to be overly positive either. That will make us overly naive and we can miss some warning signs, and maybe even attract negative situations to our lives in order to balance things out. I have been working out looking for the benefits and lessons, also the drawbacks in each situation and trying to understand that everything is really neutral.
• I can’t- The quality of our lives can be determined by the quality of our questions. We need to stop looking at our skills a being limited and start framing our thought to be “how can I?”. Don’t say “I can’t afford that…”. Instead ask yourself, “How can I afford that?”. We have to work on rewiring our brains to ask how things will be possible instead of focusing on what is lacking. Speak opportunity!
• This is happening to me- This was actually a hard one for me. I threw myself pity parties a lot in my earlier adult years and looking back, I would have been so annoyed to be around me back then. I have been to counseling a few times since then and I can remember one of them telling me to change the “to” in that phrase to “for”. This is happening FOR me! When we say it the other way, we are giving our power away and victimizing ourselves….WOW. When we change it to this is happening FOR me, we are showing gratitude for the experience (even if we do not like it) and we look for the opportunity and blessings in the experience. As soon as we hear ourselves saying something that puts us in the victim role, we have to reframe our thinking about how the event is serving our well being.

These are really simple things that I am working on and I know that it is going to take some time. We have to train our minds and when we stop working on it, we will see ourselves slipping back into our old habits. We have to work daily to rewire our thought patterns. I am constantly reading books, listening to podcasts, talking to like-minded people, saying daily affirmations, and meditating to reinforce the mindset that I want to have. Work on one at a time. Knock one down and work on the next. Slow and steady wins the race. Life is not a race but a marathon; rushing through may cause you to quit before you see the real benefits.

And GO!