Self help and meditation: Changing a negative thought into a positive one.

Staying Positive

"Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same."
Francesca Reigler

If you’re reading my blog you probably know a bit about the Law of Attraction, or are at least interested in learning more about it.

Basically the Law of Attraction states that we attract what we think about most.

You might have seen the scene on The Secret where the guy keeps going to his letter box expecting there to be bills, and guess what, he gets bills, over and over again.

So how do we make those negative thoughts become positive ones and achieve the rewards that we should be receiving?

How do we stop those pesky little (and sometimes not so little) negative thoughts from coming into our heads, or if they do happen to force their way in, how do we eradicate them and replace them with positive, good vibes? (dude)

Since late 2006 I had some major issues with money and the environment. You could call me a tight-arse (stingy) and I wouldn’t argue with you (now days anyway). Saving here and skimping there, I used to buy a new pair of shoes perhaps once every 3 years when the old ones used to be just about falling apart. I used to worry incessantly about where or when I was going to make enough money to live on past the next week. In reality, I look back at that time and we were in much better shape than I ever gave credit for. We owned an investment property in Brisbane (a capitol cities in Australia), we ate good food every night, and I even managed to slip off for a surf every couple of weeks (which was 2hrs away) from the city. Yes we owned a car as well and lived in a small but nice house. There’s gratitude for you….not.

I also worried incessantly about the environment and how the future looked bleak for my daughter with global warming and record low rainfall in our area etc. But there wasn’t much I could do about this because I was working far too hard to make the next dollar for next weeks living expenses and was too much of a tight-arse to buy green energy.

So I worried!

As clichéd as some might think it sounds, it was when I watched The Secret that my attitude changed dramatically.

Probably the first thing that I did which made a huge difference was to set some real goals – the “ask” bit in The Secret.

These were positive goals that were achievable to me, although I did bump them up a bit in order to make them a bit more challenging. Funnily enough I reached the initial goals that I set before the bump up, I suppose this was concreted into my subconscious mind (by me of course) as I was setting my goals. And because I had implanted the idea in my head that this is what I could definitely achieve – low and behold, this is what I achieved.

Not only did setting these really wonderful goals help me to focus on what I wanted, it also kept me in a positive frame of mind…….most of the time.

Yes there were those moments when good old Mr negative tried to squirm his way back into my brain and pick a fight with the new boys on the block positive thoughts.

It was my partner who helped me with how to push the negative thoughts away.

The idea was to keep a tab on when those negative thoughts tried to come in, and immediately replace them with thoughts of my goals. My goals are obviously a lovely picture in my head so it made my happy and positive again. Pretty soon this became a habit for me and the negative thoughts became less and less as the days went on. This also showed up dramatically in the results I was getting, as well as how I was living my life right now. I was actually enjoying life and appreciating the things that I had – good food, a wonderful family, a house, a car, the freedom to go on surf trips.

Now, after years of unnecessary worry about money, things have changed for the better. The type of work that I do has not changed much at all, but now I see all the possibilities ahead of me, rather than losing sleep over whether we will have enough for next weeks rent. And guess what, with my new attitude, I can now do much more meaningful things towards helping the environment such as taking time to plant some trees or donating money to the right charity, and we now have 100% green energy.

The last thing that I would like to mention about changing a negative thought to a positive is about staying inspired. As you may have guessed, surfing is a passion of mind, I’ve probably only mentioned it a half dozen times here but this is what keeps me inspired. And of course, surfing was firmly embedded amongst several of the goals that I set after seeing The Secret, i.e. to do more of it.

This is what floats my boat (pardon the pun), but inspiration obviously comes in many different forms to each individual.

It can particularly help if you have had a succession of downs, a whole day of negative thoughts and you’re struggling to get your head back into a positive space.

Stop everything and go to your passion, your inspiration. You’re only going to attract more of the negative if you continue on that path, so it is not worth continuing.

For me it might be playing with my beautiful daughter, going to the beach, putting on a great surf video or some great music that I listened over and over on some of my surf trips with my surf buddies.