Lift Your Thinking: How to Achieve What You Want Out of Life

A thought is a curious thing, once observed, if it’s negative it loses its power; its grip on you. The energy dissipates because your inner knowing sees it in the context of that bigger picture of your life. However, if the thought is positive – aligned with what you truly want out of life – let it snowball, it creates a positive momentum and great results if you’ll let it.

This last week we have been continuing to settle in our new home, new city. When I say settling, I mean, continuing to get things out of boxes, continuing to take two steps forward and one step backwards with electrics, plumbing and a kitchen renovation, kids starting at their new kindergarten and childcare, cats still locked in to get them used to their new environment (and not enjoying being locked in with little kids).

Amid the stresses and strains I catch myself being someone I don’t like, letting negative thoughts take over. As we take a small backward step with our kitchen, perhaps a handle missing, or a cabinet maker who forgot to turn up, I lose perspective and start to grumble to my partner.

Here's the start of a bad snowball, I say one thing, he plays devil’s advocate and tries to smooth it out; vice versa. Suddenly the story is growing and it’s not about a scheduling error at the kitchen company, I‘ve jumped from there to the kind of person my partner is, his character and the choices I’ve made in choosing him as a life partner. Sound familiar?

Of course, things cool off and you gain a little more perspective and life moves on. However, in the process, look at all that bad energy created, bad vibes. Of course, children are very sensitive to all of these things, as are animals. They are not in the specifics, they are just picking up on the energy, suddenly they are tuning in at a lower frequency – squabbling starts, and it snowballs further.

If you accept the premise that everything is energy, and our thoughts and feelings emit energy, what if that energy – once created – hangs around like an invisible bubble? If all energy vibrates at a different frequency (like radio waves, great analogy Esther Hicks), you begin to realise that if you are tuned to the wrong frequency you can pick up on a lot of ‘stuff’ hanging around out there.

Controversially Erkhart Tolle talks specifically about premenstrual women, whose mood – if not caught at the outset and recognised for what it is – picks up on the energy of persecution of women through the ages and snowballs.

Being a woman myself, I admit to first feeling a little outraged at this. Woe betide men who make derisory comments on this topic (“oh, that explains it; it’s that time again"). Of course, when I let this cogitate with my inner knowing, I have to admit it makes more than a little sense.

Play out these scenarios in your own life, they happens every day at home and at work. Think of how often a comment in a meeting suddenly leads to an attack (at least in your own mind) on your character, or a colleague’s character. It can be overwhelming when you start looking at life through these lenses.

When you think of all the bad energy you create and pick up on, not just of other people you are currently interacting with, but generations passed who have inhabited the same space, it starts to feel like a futile situation. It’s not, it’s really simple, you just need to tune in at a different frequency.

It's not that we are trying to never have a negative thought or experience. If negative thought exists as a result of bad experiences – and bad experiences result from negative thought – we don’t want to dwell there long. We do want to use these experiences as a contrast though, to let us know what we do want. Therefore if you aim to spend 80% of your time on the positive thoughts and experiences, that would seem like a good balance.
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Easy to say and – I know – harder to live, especially when you’ve spent years out of balance, stuck more often than you’d like in a quagmire of negative thought and bad energy. There is much advice and information available on the how, but the ones I like best are:

• Like attracts like, so anything you can do to pretend or imagine you’ve already achieved your desired outcome will really help you open the door to it. That might mean creating a vision board, meeting with (or watching or listening to) people who’ve achieved what you want, or taking a trip to a place you’d like to live; the more you can indulge all your senses in the experience of the outcome the quicker you will achieve your desires. If you dwell on what is, you will only attract more.
• If you catch negative thoughts or feelings before momentum takes hold they will dissipate. If your story has already snowballed, try to generalise the thought. For example, if it’s about another person, put yourself in their shoes and think about other reasons (other than persecuting you) they might be acting they way they are.
• Use sleep as a reset button. Each night as you sleep, the momentum of any thought is lost. As you awake, be deliberate in your intent towards any issues you want to resolve, focus on what you do want rather than what your experience has been to date.
• Regularly spend time getting in tune with yourself, this is not an indulgence, it’s a necessity – and I mean regularly, daily. Anything that allows you to meditate – to calm or empty the mind – even for 5 to 10 minutes, is what will allow you to fill your cup (so to speak) with all the things in life you truly want. It could be meditation as an activity itself, or it could be an activity that allows you to meditate (swimming, cycling, anything that requires just enough focus to keep you awake but at the same time allows you to empty the mind).

​The mind is a wonderful thing when applied to creating and growing more of what you really want, but if you are finding yourself trapped in a spiral of negative thoughts and feelings, be deliberate about moving in the direction of what you do want, it will change the momentum of your life.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/56044438@N00/3266544581">freedom</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">(license)</a>