Overcoming negative thought patterns and limited thinking - Part 2

Impatience is one of the biggest obstacles we have to overcome.

It can be human nature to panic when things go wrong, when we don't have what we want safely in our hands. There have been times when I've felt as though terror and courage were walking hand in hand toward unknown ground. When I began to learn and understand myself better, trying new methods of analysing situations; I was desperately impatient wanting immediate change. Slowly, the process itself started becoming absolutely wondrous to me.

The journey is really the exciting part, not just the arrival. The point is to enjoy the process. Once we learn to trust that we are going in the right direction towards our goals despite any seemingly wrong appearances, we can begin to fully enjoy the journey. The end result will come whether we're impatient or not.

So often, we limit our growth because we limit our thinking. We put mental limitations on our goals. Usually the only thing standing between me and what I want, is all in my thinking. Negative or fearful thoughts can keep us stuck from our goals and dreams. I hear so many of my clients say, “Well I'm just not as lucky as the next guy; I don't get the breaks in life”.

Whether you verbalize it, or merely run it through your mind that kind of limited thinking can stifle your progress. To some people, being rich constitutes being luckier than others. Many people are born with monetary and material security handed to them. I think being born with money is having one obstacle out of the way. But I've never met anyone who didn't have his or her own share of lessons to learn and fears to overcome.

Rich or poor, we are all here to learn and grow, and our thinking can either help us or hinder us. If we allow ourselves to think the we don't deserve the best or if we believe that we must settle for less than what we want, then how can we reach our full potential.?

What I do with negative thoughts is combat them with positive ones. I reverse the thought.

In the beginning, changing a thought takes some discipline. It's as though you are teaching yourself a new game; a mind game. It's called Fake it till you make it. Even if you have to pretend to be positive and happy to get started, anything's better than being unhappy. I have always been a positive thinker so this method is easier for me than for someone who leans towards the negative. I've seen this simple process work miraculously on sceptical negative people. Adults who have been extremely unhappy and depressed since childhood were able to reverse their negative thinking to a generally positive outlook on life and in the process everything changed and improved.

I mean everything.

I had a client come to see me he was living in a negative world everything about his world was negative. After working with him for a few weeks I watched him go through this changing process when he was in his mid-40s and very unsettled in his thinking as a result of childhood fears and programming he was locked in to negative thinking patterns. Fortunately, he was willing to give this method of pretending a try. Once he agreed to give this experiment a try, I knew he would overcome his negativism. When my client first started pretending to be happy, he told me that it felt very unnatural, and made him feel very self-conscious to be smiling and laughing so much.

However, within a few days the positive results and effects started to appear. People were actually responding to him differently. He said they showed him more warmth and gave him more time and attention than what he was ever accustomed to. It eventually became second nature for him to be positive. Progressively, the pretending stopped. He adopted a generally positive outlook because it felt right to be happy. It improved his relationships, career and above all, his sense of self-worth.

We can all change our thinking if we believe it and give it a try.