Positive Thinking.

This could be described as the glue that holds all the other topics together, or as the foundation on which all other parts are built. Disregard this section at your peril.

Question: Why does everything in your life happen, what is the reason, be it good or bad, happy or sad, do you know why everything has happened the way it has turned out so far?
If like most you will probably say it is down to luck or it was fate, everything just happened by chance. The circumstances were out of your control, you had a bad childhood, you come from a dysfunctional family. So what if I said you were wrong on all counts, it isn't even that you have a kindly departed aunt looking after you from beyond. Let me expand the question even further, why do you feel the way you do, what is the cause of your current circumstances and conditions in your life? Why do you feel so angry and depressed because you feel that someone has let you down? You may even be asking yourself, "Why is this happening to me"? Do you really want to know the answer? Do you really want me to point the finger at exactly why? The read on, but don't get mad at me when you find out. I hope you are strong enough to accept this answer because every thing is down to you and more importantly the way you are thinking.

Let me put it another way, You are who you are and in the circumstances you are in because of the total amount of thoughts you have concentrated on up to this point in your life.

There is a Universal Law that has applied to mankind and remains a fact of life since man first set foot on the earth. The law simply states…. “Thought (or lack of thought) leads to action (or inaction) which always leads to results.”

Well I guess that has lost a few and I will get some nasty emails about that but for those of you still with me lets go a little deeper into this and I will explain more for you.

Do you agree with me that you have a free will to choose, I hope you do because that is what makes us human and sets us apart from all of creation. Now if you have a free will you have the power to choose your decisions, you choose what to believe. Your mind creates your negative situations and conditions just as easily as it does the positive ones.

The reason you are in the position you are in today is because you have allowed your mind to create them. You created them in your mind first, they have come from inside of you and you alone, no one else is responsible for your thinking or how you feel right now.

Let me give you an example to try and explain this a little better.
Say my partner and I have a disagreement which escalates into ending the relationship. I turn my back on her and she leaves. An all to common event these days. So lets fill in a few blanks here. The partnership has been together for some months and we are already talking about living together, marriage and everything that goes with a long term commitment, we can see ourselves living together because we both know the power of positive visualisation. OK so lets say one of us has some friends even family who are negative about our partner, that sets up a little doubt in the mind, over a few weeks that doubt is allowed to build and they accept this as maybe they know my partner better than me and some small cracks appear in the relationship. That same partner then starts to pick up on some minor faults in the other and the crack gets slightly deeper. A little later you tell your partner that you love them and they respond with I don't believe you. Over time with this sort of negative input the crack deepens and both are hanging onto the relationship by their fingernails until inevitably one will break and the crack changes into two pieces and splits the relationship. So who is at fault here? The one for listening to their friends and allowing doubt to enter, or the one who didn't stop that doubt at the outset with something like, "Stop, your friends do not know us better then we know ourselves, we make our own decisions in this relationship". Well in fact both are wrong because they both had a free will in this to make a decision. Both of them could now slip into depression and start there own pity party blaming it all on the other person. But in this case it worked out different, one goes of to start a pity party and the other picks themselves up dusts themselves down and says OK they have made their decision I will abide by that, but still believes that they are meant to be together and does not let the love they hold for the other to be damaged or die. Their thinking will not allow them to feel anything negative about that partner, their belief will not stop believing even after the partnership has ended, in fact they will just be grateful for the time they spent together and if that is it they will not get down about it. Their mind creates their world and they refuse to join in the pity party.

Now think about this, it doesn't matter how positive you are as a person, if you allow any negative input into your mind and you dwell on it for any length of time it will create doubts and those doubts will grow if you do nothing about them. Your mind will find a way to create whatever it is you are thinking about, but you can also stop it and change the thought process at any point in time you wish to. It doesn't matter how many dreams you have built, how well you visualise the picture of you future or even how much positive self talk comes out of your mouth, if you do not control your thinking you might as well not waste your time and energy because none of them will ever happen. In fact your mind is so powerful that it has the capability to destroy all the other positive aspects put together. Positive and negative can never live together in the same mind.

So stop having your pity party and start realising the power you have inside of you. Nobody else can think for you, others can offer input and opinions but it is up to you what you decide is true and what goes into the garbage can. You should be aware that part of our mind is sometimes classed or called our ego. This part is always trying to hide away our creative positive thoughts. The ego is the part that will set up the doubts and prove you right, the ego doesn't want you to feel you are ever wrong, it is selfish and deluded, it is using your past experiences against you. So if in the relationship I mentioned above we have previous failed relationships, our egos will be working flat out to prove us right, something along the lines of you failed before so why do you think it will be different this time. This is why it is so important to control your thoughts and when doubts appear you have to dispel them, in effect doubt your doubts. You will soon find that your ego will give up and can be re-programmed. I will say more about this a little later.

You must realise that your present circumstances have not come about because of an outside influence but rather it is you who has created them. Once you realise this you can change those circumstances by changing what you think. As long as you blame others for your circumstances you will be locked in a vicious circle that you cannot break out of.

Your mind can be thought of as a garden; the seeds you plant in that garden are like the thoughts you have every moment of every day. Tend and water those seeds and they will bloom according to their genetics. If you plant corn seeds you will get corn, if you plant a tulip bulb you will get a tulip flower, if you plant apple seeds you will get an apple tree that bears fruit for many years to come. The apple tree takes longer to grow just the same as some of your bigger dreams will take to be realised, but the apple tree once grown will continue to give you fruit every year that you look after it. However, stop looking after the tree, neglect it for a while and every gardener knows you will become infested with blight and bugs which destroy your harvest. Does it not make sense then to plant the right sort of thinking seeds into your mind? Should you not tend and nurture those seeds, feeding them with goodness so that they may grow strong and healthy? Does it not make sense to protect those seeds from harm the same as you would protect young seedlings from a late spring frost? Of course it does, because neglect them for just a short while and they will die, they will become over run by weeds or your negative thoughts. Have you noticed how weeds grow faster in a garden? This is the same with negative thoughts, let one little negative thought lodge in your mind unchecked for any length of time and it will eventually take over the whole garden choking and strangling all the other plants. Those young positive plants are much more susceptible when they are just starting to grow because it is then that they need the most care and attention. So nurture them with care, fully grown apple trees are not bothered to much by the weeds, it is the neglect and care that affects them. The more you care for and nurture the greater the harvest you will receive.

You will also find a bonus here because as you tend your garden, as you become more and more profficient and experienced with planting the right seeds for the harvest you desire so your life in the garden will become easier. You will tend to the plants automatically without much thought because you know what needs to be done. So it is with your thinking, as you nurture your thoughts it will become more autominous to you. With each successful harvest your improvements will encourage you to carry on to bigger and better, negative weeds will be defeated more easily soon nothing will be impossible for you to grow.

Negative thinking is like a magnet and will attract all things negative. The more you try to break out of this cycle the more will be attracted to you. Whatever you are thinking, even if you are thinking I have to stop being so negative, this will attract more negative. If you are thinking about how to reject fear, fear will be attracted to you. The more you put your attention onto those thoughts the more you attract it towards you. There are no idle thoughts, all thoughts lead to something.

Let me ask you are you fearful of not meeting those sales targets at work, or failing to achieve the dream or even that your partner will leave you? If so you are feeling insecure and that start from inside of you with one little thought. The more you think in such a way the more it will start to materialise in front of you. The more you try to resist it the more it will attract. There is only one way to deal with and that is to change your thinking. There is no option to just ignore it and it will go away by itself, it may disappear from one area in your life only to re-appear in another. You choose what you want to think about and then be consistent in that thinking. You control your thoughts they do not control you. Your destiny is controlled by your thoughts, whichever way you are thinking.

I can hear a lot of people saying "I don't believe you, show me the hard evidence, prove it to me and if it works I will believe you". I have only one answer for you if you are thinking that way right now and that is that "You should not need to see something to believe in it". Look out of the window are the trees moving in the wind? Can you see the wind, no, maybe you should believe that the trees move by themselves.

What do you desire most in your life at this moment? Material wealth, great health, a loving relationship maybe. You can have all these but you will never have them with negative thinking. You have to think positive thoughts and believe, never wavering no matter what happens around you to achieve them.

Show your gratitude and give thanks for what you wish to receive, whatever it is that you wish to come into your life. If you desire wealth then learn how to give with a grateful heart and do so in secret, do not let your ego boast about what you have done. What you give out is what you will receive in return. If you are having trouble with this, then simply tell yourself, positive thinking is not hard, positive visualisation is not difficult, say it out loud. Read the self talk article I have here and you will realise the power of self talk. If you say "My partner doesn't love me" it will eventually come true. If you repeat "I am worried that I will be made redundant from my job" it will in time come true. SO guard what you say, guard against what you listen to. Some people may call self talk prayer, that's OK just do it, and do it more so when you notice those negative thoughts starting. Why, because your mind has to stop thinking to listen to what you are saying. This is the simplest way of defeating your ego. Do not worry about the negative thoughts when they occur acknowledge them for what they are and speak out something positive until they are gone.

I was in the right, it was my partner who wronged me I hear you say, why should I change? Because we are all human we must claim responsibility for our part, our actions and our role in events. If we don't see that we may have done or said something to cause the other person to stray or react the way that they did then we are giving up our free will and we lose control of ourselves. Remember your ego will use every trick in the book and more to stop you and trip you up at any opportunity.

Do not fall into the trap that everything will be plain sailing once you have mastered this. We are all going to face some challenging situations to test us and our beliefs. Your partner will do or say something that will anger or disappoint you. That's is a fact of life it is a part of being human, it is how we deal with these situations that counts. You can either turn and run away or you can face up to them and see them through.

Remember that there are only two ways to see a situation or difficulty, positively or negatively it is your choice. I will go for the positive.