recreatingreality.com

We have all heard the philosophy of positive mental attitude.  In today’s market, we have been told that we can go beyond thinking positively.  We must believe in positives.  We must never think of a negative if we want our dreams to come true.  Well, thinking positively or a positive mental attitude can be learned by restating your negative thoughts.

We have heard of the anti-war movement.  Perhaps, it is better named to peace movement.  Many of us have said, “I don’t want to be fat.”  Perhaps, it would be better to say that you want to be slim and trim and fit and healthy.  Some of us have said we are sick and tired of driving our rattling old car.  Maybe we should close our eyes and visualize that new car we have now detailed by picture and description.

The idea is to look forward to our goals rather than stating what we do not want.  There is a purpose to looking forward in positive thoughts and words.  When we state what we have and what we don’t want, we are stuck in the bubble of the reality we wish to recreate.  However, when we word our thoughts and goals with specifics of what we are striving for we are not weighed down by what is but soaring to what will be.  We are recreating our thought process and focusing on the positive outcome.

Think of a football game.  The players on the field look toward the endzone, the touchdown.  They don’t gather in the huddle to say, “Oh, gee!  We are on the fifty yard line and we don’t want to be here.”  Instead, I suspect the quarter back says something like “I am going to pass the ball to you at the thirty yard line so you can catch the ball and run the last thirty yards into the endzone.”  Well, maybe not those exact words, but I am sure the quarterback says that he is aiming for forward progress and maybe gives a benchmark.

Most of us have a tendency to say, “I don’t want to be….” or “I don’t like…” or something similar.  We use the negative in the statement because we do not know what we do want.  We only know that we are dissatisfied with where we are.  Let’s say I am in New York (just an example) and I am dissatisfied with where I am.  If I say, “I don’t want to be in New York,” that certainly leaves a world of options of places I would rather be and little chance of getting anywhere beyond New York. 

However, if I say, “I would love to move to Florida,” at the very least I am pointed in a direction.  If I do a little more research I can probably determine exactly where in Florida I prefer to be.  With that information I can determine the cost of getting there and what I need to do to get there.

Learn to think in terms of positives.  Learn to speak in positive terms.  Develop a positive mental attitude.  Aim for rather than escape from.  Again, this goes back to visualization and crystallizing one’s thoughts.  Refine your destination so you will know what it takes to get there and more importantly you will recognize it when you arrive.

Listen to yourself as you speak.  Listen to your thoughts.  Are you a positive person?  Or, are you working to escape?  Listen to your friends.  Do they lift you up when they talk?  Or, do they drag you down?  There are some people who are leeches on the spirit.  We all know someone like that.

My husband and a friend of his used to get together every Wednesday night for dinner.  It was a long standing practice long before I married him.  I began to notice that when my husband arrived at home after the Wednesday dinners he would say very little, looked drained of energy, and go directly to bed.  The next day at his work he would drag through the tasks and make more errors in simple calculations than usual. 

One Wednesday night for some reason or another the dinner was cancelled.  I noticed that my husband was enthusiastic the next day at work.  In fact, he completed his tasks quickly and correctly.  As an extra benefit we were able to take Friday afternoon off.  The following week I asked my husband to take notice of his energy level prior to the dinner, during the dinner, and the next day.  What was amazing was that he immediately recognized that his friend talked about nothing but negative events and things that had gone wrong in his life since their last meeting.  And, with two weeks worth of negatives built up since the previous dinner, when my husband got home he sat outside in the car for almost an hour trying to gather enough energy to come into the house.

We all know people like that… the energy zappers.  Maybe, in some cases we are energy zappers for some of our friends.  We all know people who are down and want to keep us down with them.  You know… that old misery loves company concept.

Well, speaking in terms of negatives rather than positives have that effect on us.  Thinking in the negative rather than the positive does the same thing.  That said, we may not be able to change our friends thoughts or ideas, but we can control our own. 

Work on thinking in the positive.  Accentuate the positive…. eliminate the negative.  (That’s a line from a song, isn’t it?)  Good advice.