Today, I wanted to share how I discovered the whole process to develop a positive mindset. What happened for me, was I was feeling anxious and depressed early on in the pandemic. I’m an extrovert, I enjoy being with people and being out in the community so being in lockdown during the pandemic, I found that my mood was getting quite low.
So I decided to take action rather than allowing my mood to continue downward and I decided to look into mindset training. And, instead of looking at my thoughts as limiting beliefs, I chose to see how the thoughts in my mind were holding me back and causing me to feel anxious and depressed.
I began to replace the repetitive thoughts with more positive thoughts and affirmations, I started to feel better, I felt happier. As I began to feel happier, I was suddenly open to new ideas, insights and circumstances and I realized I could consciously create the life I wanted.
I achieved this through repetition. I used Dana Wilde’s book “Train Your Brain” and I also listen to her podcast, “Positive mindset for entrepreneurs”. Her approach is ignore what is not going well and focus only on what is going well.
Rather than looking at thoughts as as limiting beliefs, which make me feel like I am responsible for these beliefs, I prefer to see them as thoughts that were programmed into my mind by my family, teachers and society over the course of my life. They had no idea what they were doing, they had no idea how to program my beautiful mind and so I realized that none of these thoughts are even my thoughts, habits or beliefs, they are passed down from my family and society and then I regurgitated the same thoughts unconsciously throughout my life.
Repetition
A good way to think about these beliefs can be to think about all the ways we learned through repetition in our lives – we learned our name, we learned how to walk, we learned how to read, write and speak all from repetition!
Dana Wilde really outlines how to replace repetitive thoughts with positive, soothing thoughts and that is how you start to feel better. Here are some general, soothing thoughts to try and replace a repetitive thought.
Everything is working out for me.
Everything is unfolding perfectly for me.
I can do this.
Consciously repeat these positive thoughts all day long to overrun the subconscious mind and begin to create familiarity with the new thoughts.
Most of us are living unconsciously and we never know that we can choose our thoughts or that our thoughts aren’t even ours and have no place in our current lives. Some of those thoughts may be 200+ years old if they were passed down from generation to generation!
As you start to feel better, ideas, insights, creativity, people and circumstances start popping up in your life that couldn’t have shown up before because you have now made space in your mind for these positive experiences! You feel positive, optimistic, hopeful and want to take action on the exciting things that come through.
You feel invigorated, empowered and enervated to take action on insights that come in through your intuition. As soon as you start to feel better and start to develop new positive beliefs and habits then new ideas and thoughts can come into your life.
It’s a process
This is a process! It’s not easy! It’s an ongoing process for the rest of my life if I choose to be a conscious creator of my life. It’s hard work because each time you think you’ve overcome a repetitive thought, at each new level of expansion those repetitive thoughts kick up a fuss and say “hey! I’m still here and I’m not ready to give up yet”.
It’s helpful to use visualization, meditation and journaling so you can feel gratitude and appreciation for what is going well and move forward from the appreciation for what is going well. How can I now use this positive experience to move forward?
So, here’s my suggested strategy to put this formula into action:
Start with a few days of just noticing the repetitive thoughts running through your mind. They probably sound like “I don’t, I can’t or I’m not”. It will be clear once you start to pay attention.
After you’ve noticed for a few days, start to write the repetitive thoughts down for another day or so.
From there you begin to replace the thoughts with the positive, soothing, general thoughts and repeat the positive thoughts more and more until you are essentially only repeating the positive thoughts in your mind all day long.
Then, notice if positive ideas, thoughts, people, circumstances start to pop up that offer hope and optimism and get you excited and want to take action.
When you notice, feel grateful appreciation, say thank you! This is fantastic! Really promote the smallest thing so you can continue to see the growth you are experiencing. The benefits of feeling good and taking action on your insights and must be celebrated and appreciated so you can continue to see you are making progress.
Appreciate the new ideas and insights
This is another key aspect of a positive mindset – gratitude. Take time to feel, deeply, gratitude for the top 10 things that bring you happiness in your life. Once you start to appreciate feeling grateful, more good things will flow into your life!
Really appreciate what you are doing when you are building a positive mindset. You are reprogramming your mind! You are installing a new, positive program. You are replacing the old, outdated thoughts, habits and beliefs that no longer serve you and adding in the thoughts habits and beliefs that allow you to live consciously and create a life you love.
If you don’t continue repeating the old, worn out thoughts, they will settle to the bottom of your subconscious mind and will eventually not bubble up much at all, allowing only the positive thoughts you choose to circulate.
The great thing about mindset training is that you don’t have to tell anyone else you are doing anything. You can do all of this in your own mind. But trust me, people in your life will notice in time that you are different. They may not like it either, because they are part of your old program. Be patient and continue forging ahead. In time, you will meet new people or get new ideas and insights that will allow your continued growth.
If you know someone who could benefit from building a new, positive mindset, please share this post with them! I If you are part of an organization that needs speakers on these topics, and you’re impressed with what I have shared, please get in touch! You can reach me at www.vickymcgrath.ca