Are you unhappy with your life situation? Do you feel like things never go your way? Or, that everyone is lucky but you?
If you feel like you always get the short end of the stick, there’s one thing you can do right now to start having more positive experiences and turn your life around.
Take Responsibility
If you hate your job, it’s probably your boss’s fault. If you don’t get along with your family, it’s their fault. If home life is stressful, it’s your partner’s fault, right? Wrong!
If you stop to think about it, you’re the only one who can think for you. No one else is responsible for the thoughts going through your mind.
So, the thoughts you entertain are entirely up to you. You get to choose whether to think positively or negatively. Unfortunately, many people fall back into negative thinking patterns.
It’s true, you may have a frustrating boss or co-worker, or a dysfunctional family, but you get to decide what to think about them and your life situation. The same goes for your health, future, opportunities, etc.
The Power of Thought
What you think doesn’t just stay isolated in your mind, separate from the rest of you. In fact, your cells feel every thought and feeling you experience. You can’t hide anything from them!
That’s why your thoughts are incredibly powerful. If you think positive thoughts, your cortisol levels drop and your brain produces serotonin, which leads to a sense of well-being.
Instead, negative thinking will slow your brain down and make it more difficult to function. In short, your thoughts impact your entire person, from your physical body to your emotional and psychological bodies, too.
What Neurologists Have to Say About
When you make the effort to think positively, you create new neural pathways in your brain. This is amazing because by creating new neurons, you can actually reconstruct how you perceive the world, as well as the nature of your brain and your own consciousness.
This is the science behind epigenetics, a field that explores the fact that you can literally influence your cells by what you think and believe!
If you think positive thoughts, the cells in your body are happy, too. If you think negative thoughts, your cells will be impacted.
Physical Manifestations of Negative Thinking and Emotional Pain
Do you ever wonder why your back aches? Or why you have constipation or some type of chronic pain? It could be the result of thoughts you’ve been thinking for a very long time.
That’s because thoughts lead to emotions, which leads to feelings and sensations throughout the body. When we continue to think negatively about something, we experience a chronic, negative emotion.
And when we don’t deal with this emotional pain, it finds a way into an area of your body and hangs out there.
Here are some examples for you to consider:
- Lower back pain comes from a fear of money.
- Neck pain can be due to your refusal to see other perspectives, and being stubborn.
- Hip pain can be because you’re scared to move forward and make big decisions.
- Neck or throat pain comes from not being able to forgive.
- Hand pain could be because you’re not able to connect with others.
Here’s One Reason Why Your Immunity is Weak
This study identified that when you experience something negative and feel negative emotions, your immunity lowers. How does this work?
Your prefrontal cortex (PFC) is associated with depression. So, when you frequently use your right prefrontal cortex and think about unhappy things, you will have much lower antibody levels.
In contrast, thinking about happier things helps your body develop more antibodies.
You could argue that happiness leads to healthiness. And instead of the old saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” we could say, “Happy each day keeps the doctor away”!
What Do You Believe About You and Your Life?
Do you believe you can be healthy? Or, that you can have happy, functional relationships? What about your dreams – have you given up on them?
The truth is, what you believe is what is true.
So, if you don’t believe you can recover from an illness, or manage a health condition, the truth is, you’re probably right. If you’re having difficulty feeling well and recovering. It could be because you don’t believe you can, and therefore, you block yourself from achieving and obtaining wellness.
If you always believe that you don’t deserve love and respect from other people, you will only and always attract people who don’t love and respect you. You’ll attract the wrong people, except they won’t be wrong. They’ll be perfect for you, based on your beliefs.
Many people attract abusive, manipulative and destructive people into their lives for one simple reason: they have a negative mindset and believe they don’t deserve anything better.
Likewise, countless people settle for jobs and situations they hate. Why do they do this?
Because they get stuck in a negative thinking pattern, in which they focus on what’s wrong, instead of what’s right. They focus on what they don’t like and don’t want, instead of dreaming of what they can have.
Bad Decisions Lead to Negative Outcomes
Your decisions and your actions always have a consequence.
If you don’t like the consequence, look back on your decision and figure out what went wrong. Did you make the decision during an emotionally charged moment without thinking rationally and logically? Did you make a decision out of fear, anger, resentment or a scarcity mindset?
Your decisions and actions are like boomerangs. Whatever we throw out always comes back to us.
Tips to Develop a Positive Mindset
Learning to create positive thinking patterns isn’t easy work, but it definitely worth it! Here are some do-able tips you can try today:
- Keep a gratitude journal and prompt yourself to think of all the things you’re thankful for.
- Replace negative thoughts with positive ones, and always try to find the silver lining.
- Begin a meditation practice so that you can begin to observe your thoughts instead of being consumed by them. This will eventually give you the freedom and the ability to think positively.
Your life is meant to be positive and joyful. If it isn’t, take a step back and ask yourself what your mindset and thought pattern looks like. If they’re a long chain of negative thoughts, take courage.
It’s never too late to start creating positive thought patterns to change your life for the better.
