Boy was I sceptical. I laughed at people who believed in it, called them silly, crazy, unrealistic. But I wanted to find out if it could be possible to change your life simply by changing your mind....changing how your brain thinks. Retrain my brain to think happy thoughts always or find the bright side of every situation. I also committed to being mindful and notice everything around me in every moment. That meant not thinking ahead during the day but just taking things as they came.
I am very proud to say that IT WORKS!
Before I did this I would live from one chaotic situation to the next, drama to drama, frustration to frustration. Very rarely did I feel that sense of peace and true happiness in my day. I was always blaming someone for what was going on, upset with someone, stressed multi tasking, spending little quality time with my kids, miserable most of the time.
It was tough in the beginning. It took a lot of work and dedication. I had to focus on it all the time. I started by beginning my day before my feet hit the floor with a positive statement or a daily devotion from the Bible. It was then that I realized that my normal morning message to myself for years had been "I'm sooooo tired". I would walk to the shower telling myself that, get ready for the day telling myself that and never even realized I was doing it until I tried to change it. I replaced it with " I feel great, I slept well, I am going to have a good day" As I said, this made me laugh at first and felt very unnatural but I kept doing it for about 3 years until only positive messages were natural in the morning. There were days when I told myself I just had a right to be grumpy and negative and gave up but I got right back into it because I had already learned how wonderful it felt to be positive.
It all snowballed from there. I started catching myself in negative thoughts and purposefully changed them into positive thoughts (and hated it sometimes). For the first time in my life I enjoyed the winter season. I saw the beauty of it, found fun things to do. I chose to remind myself that there is something beautiful about winter days and found it every day, it was the first year in a very long time that I did not fall into deep depression in the winter. I didn't complain about the slush, I looked up at the glistening trees. This was what convinced me that I must keep this up.
On those days where it seems nothing can go right, I can laugh now and take the lessons from each situation. I can be patient and wait for the significance of tough situations to come to me. I can accept things for what they are and find a way to make it peaceful.
This change in my life has changed my life. A concious choice, hard work, changed my life. I no longer wait for someone to come along with good news or a lottery win. I make my life what I want it to be. I can only do that if I think positively. Negative thoughts suck the life from us and make us feel helpless, useless, frustrated. I have realized that I am the only one that can make me happy, if I am not happy with myself I will never be happy with anyone else. Now that I am happy with myself I no longer seek attention from others to make me feel good, I am staisfied with what I have created for myself. I don't even need a lottery win.
Just last week I was feeling like I wanted to be negative and wrote that on my facebook status...I was choosing to be negative that day and didn't care....I couldn't do it. I laughed so hard at myself and added to the status update that I couldn't do it, I had to find the good in my day. I am so accustomed to feeling good about everything or making every tough situation OK that I couldn't stand the tought of feeling miserable for ten minutes, nevermind a whole day!
My husband says I've lost it. He doesn't buy this stuff at all. He is very rarely grumpy though, he seems to naturally go with the flow without much effort. I have friends and family that say it is unrealistic, I am allowing myself to believe something that is not true. People can view it any way that like. The envious people are annoyed by it because as humans we all crave euphoria and naturally get jealous if we see someone with something we want. Even if it is crazy, unrealistic....I DON'T CARE! I know that I have gone from being a medically fragile person who was always unhappy with everything to a person who handles medical issues naturally and feels fantastic about life even when I am down. I can choose to let others bathe in drama and negativity and ignore it.
I can't say this enough, the brain is such an amazing organ, and we control it. We can get it to do whatever we want. We have trained it all along and can retrain it to think that way that we want.
Next time you encounter a "positive" person, be happy for them. No their life is not perfect, it's just happy because they choose to deal with life differently. Depsite the hard work in the beginning, it is so worth it because it reduces the amount of negative energy that we waste on anything. All positive energy is well spent.
Imagine what would happen if the only messages we heard were positive? If the media were to only speak of winter weather in a positive way, I fervently believe that it would make a huge difference especially for people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. The media is a major part of our day and the messages we recieve from them form how our day will go if we choose to allow it. TV's, radios, newspapers....only sharing to positive side of winter instead of reminding us every day that it is so cold, wet, sloppy....the"s" word. Say it SNOW and it's beautiful and fun!
I am a very blessed woman, I always have been. I just didn't always pay attention to it enough to realize it. Now I know and there will never be a person or situation that will convince me otherwise, some may make me waver but I have found the bright side and I'm staying!
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