Tag: thought control

YOU ARE TRYING TO WIN AT THE WRONG GAME! ðŸŽ®

How many hours do you spend on video games in a week? How much time playing solitaire or doing crossword puzzles? What do you achieve by getting better at these? How about increasing your income? How about spending time to look better in comparison to others or for society at large? When you think about it, most of our lives are spent in one or more of these endeavors. While I am sure all of them have their redeeming qualities, we should be focused on winning a different game – the inner game.

What I mean by the inner game, is mastering our thoughts and our attitude. When you stop and think about it, life is truly an inner game. The quality of our life, is the quality of our thoughts and emotions. If you are someone who sees what is wrong in life and generally feels angry towards the world and you win the lottery what will happen? You will be rich and…angry. If you can maintain a positive attitude despite outside circumstances, you have true power. Life, or other people and circumstances, will not be able to bring you down.

As you can see, this is not a new thought. Controlling your mind means that you are taking back control of your life. Not being subject to the whim of outside circumstances. Life has it’s ups and downs. Your mind and emotions do not have to. This is a lifelong journey. Much like physical fitness, mental fitness requires daily maintenance. Unfortunately, you do not workout one time and stay in shape forever. Same with gaining control over your mind and emotions. We slip up and act and say things when we are angry that we later regret. Can you see how even doing that less would make your life better?

How can we improve the quality of our thoughts, and thus the quality of our life? There are many options. I am still learning some myself. One of them is to develop an attitude of gratitude. Finding reasons to be grateful even when it seems impossible to do so will make your life amazing. Finding the opportunities in challenges. Some people just see a pile of manure, some people see fertilizer. Next time your life seems like a pile of the stuff that comes out the backside of an animal, ask yourself, “How can I use this to grow from?” Countless musicians, authors and artists have used the worst pain in their lives to create some of their best work. Why can’t you do the same? Also, look for other meanings in life. We can find ourself looking for the worst on occasion. Begin to train your mind to look for the best!

All of these suggestions can dramatically improve the quality of your thoughts and your life. If you would like more ideas to improve your life, feel free to pick up one, or all, of my books! Just search “Neil Panosian” on Amazon. Feel free to share what makes the difference for you in your thoughts and emotions in the comments below.

WANT TO RADICALLY IMPROVE YOUR LIFE? TAKE 5 ðŸ˜Œ

I am so excited to bring you today’s strategy for an amazing life. It will be featured in my upcoming book, but you will get a preview here today! This secret to an amazing life only takes a mere 5 minutes a day. Does that sound to good to be true? Trust me, it is not. You may be tempted to dismiss this as too easy, you should not. In fact, do this for a month. Prove to yourself that it works. When you do, I would love to hear your experience with it back here on this site.

Here is the first step. Find a five-minute period in your day that you can regularly count on. This could be right after you get out of work. If you are ambitious, it could be first thing in the morning. This can be risky as you never know what things may crop up. It is also when people are usually rushing. A great time would also be five-minutes before you go to bed at night. Pick what works for you, but make sure it is a time you can regularly count on.

Next, set a timer on your phone for 5 minutes. If you do not have a phone with a timer, anything will do. Look at the clock, whatever works for you. Here is all you have to do – for this amount of time, think of what you have to be grateful for. Another post about the power of gratitude? I hear that everywhere! Do you know why you hear that everywhere? Because it works. Gratitude is a superpower. In a world that does its best to make you feel fear, anger and depression, being able to focus on what you are grateful for, takes discipline. It also takes your life to a whole other level.

Let us look at the science behind this and why it will actually make such a profound difference in our life. We have around 60,000 thoughts a day. According to the National Science Foundation, 80% of those thoughts are negative. That is alarming in its own right, but add this fact to it and it becomes down right scary. According to Dr. Fred Luskin of Stanford University, 90% of our thoughts are repetitive! That means we are thinking of the same negative junk over and over every day. It also means that a mere 10% of our thoughts are new and focused. That is why it is imperative that we take complete control of those thoughts. Say for like 5 minutes a day. If we do that, and focus on gratitude, that will become part of our 80% that are repeated. Can you imagine if we could eventually flip the script and have 80% of our thoughts positive? Even getting that negative percentage down to 49% means that our lives will be more positive than negative. It only takes 5 minutes, but will have a compounding effect. Doing it at that same time every day will make it more of a habit and likely to succeed.

Don’t take my word, or the word of science, try this out for yourself. Do it for 30 days. Remember that our thinking is the result of years of behavior and that changing it will take a little time. If we can accomplish this in only 5 minutes a day, how powerful could that be? You have 1440 minutes in your day, 5 of those is only .004% of your day. Yet, by doing this, you can radically shift your mindset! I would love to come back to this in 30 days and hear your results.

MINDSET TRAINING

How many of us find ourselves falling into the trap of the first column in the photo above? After over 20 years of both studying and teaching self-improvement, I am confident in saying…I do. Yes, even those of us who should ‘know better’ can still fall victim into letting our thoughts get the best of us. In my book, A Happy Life for Busy People, I equate this to a snowball rolling downhill, it gets bigger and bigger with each passing second. A most recent example for me is when it was near freezing as I left for work in the middle of the month of May. As I am not a fan of the cold at all my thoughts were on the fast track to nowhere good. Thinking about how much I didn’t like the cold, how much I wished I were on vacation or lived somewhere warmer. I began to think about how it didn’t seem fair I had to wake up and go to work when it was so unseasonably cold. If my thoughts were allowed to keep going like that, how do you think I would have shown up for work that day? With a positive attitude ready to face the day and any challenges that would go with it? Not hardly.

You may be thinking, “If this guy who has been in the field of self-improvement for over two decades still has his thoughts run away on him, what hope do I have?” The answer is plenty! Success in life is progress, not perfection. We are always going to slip up. If we continually beat ourselves up over that, we will most likely find ourselves living in the first column of the picture above. The secret to living an amazing life is not to never have any negative thoughts or tough days, but to be able to recognize them and take actions to correct and move on from them. The million dollar question is how do we do that?

Having some self-care ideas and actions at the ready can be the solution we all need. Personally, I love having my ‘happy playlist’ or list of songs I know put me in a good mood. I love having images that remind me of fun, warm tropical destinations. I keep them in my phone, at the calendar at work and on the occasional travel mug. Speaking of calendars, I have a inspirational day-by-day calendar that wakes me up with something positive to think of every morning. If you are low on ideas for self care ideas for your life, feel free to borrow some of mine, or even print out the list above. It can work even better when you combine a few. Using the list above, that can mean dancing to your favorite song while laughing out loud. You could make a journal entry celebrating your wins while relaxing in a hot bath. There are so many options. My only suggestion is to have a list or idea in place before the challenges come along. It can prove difficult, if not impossible, to be resourceful when you are in a bad emotional state.

Just remember when you find your thoughts running away on you that success is progress not perfection. Look at it as a great opportunity to practice some much needed self-care. A good time to pause and focus on what is really important and what really brings us joy. The more you practice this, the better you will become. The one thing that you can be sure of is that life will give you plenty of opportunities to practice.

TAKE CONTROL OF THESE 3 THINGS

As we begin a new week let us put our energy where it can really make a difference. Lots of us, myself included, can find our energy focused on where we have no control. We complain about how our boss is treating us. We wish our spouse we be more appreciative. We wish the weather would be warmer, our car would run better, time would slow down. You get the idea. There are a million things we fret and worry about over which we have no control.

This great quote from Jack Canfield, one of the creators of Chicken Soup for the Soul, really breaks it down for us. There are really only 3 things we have control of, our thoughts, the images we hold in our heads and our actions. I suggest this coming week we focus only on them. I also suggest taking them one at a time. Trying to fix all three may be overwhelming. Let us take them one by one and use the example of having a boss that is unpleasant.

We start with our thoughts. When our boss comes down on us unfairly and without reason, what is our first thought? How unfair it all is? How over emotional and unfit they are for the position? How truly this might be a violation of how they are supposed to act and treat people? While that might all be true, does it really serve us? I would have to say no. In fact, thinking this way can only increase our anger and make us feel worse. Not only with this leave us emotionally exhausted, but held on to long enough can leave us with a host of physical symptoms as well. This means we are not only treated poorly by our boss. but we are treating ourselves poorly on top of it. The solution? Reframe our thoughts. Does our boss have some outside problems we are unaware of? We should be grateful we are not in their position. Maybe they could really use some anger management and stress therapy? This turns our feelings from anger to compassion. To some of you it may sound like you are letting your boss ‘off the hook’ or giving them a pass. It is actually helping ourselves. Whether we are angry or compassionate about our boss’ actions does not affect them nearly as much as it does us.

Next is the images we hold in our minds. These are both the result of, and influence the thoughts we hold. In our example of the terrible boss, we may picture them as a maniacal dictator. We may even have pictures of them as a warden in a prison. Keep this up long enough our thoughts may turn to imagining them roasting over an open spit. None of these are terribly productive. Ok, maybe the last one offers us a little bit of humorous reprieve. Eventually, they will serve to stoke the flames of anger and make us even more upset. Try picturing what it must be like to go home so full of anger and vengence. How well do you think this person is able to sleep at night? How much peace to you think is in their soul? Yes, everyone does have one despite what they may have you believe. How much joy do you think they have in their life? We can also make it a point to keep images of what we enjoy or what makes us happy. Not only is this far more pleasant than any image that has to do with our boss, but will be a great escape to keep our spirits up when they happen to be releasing their anger on us.

Lastly, is the actions we take. These are very often predicated on the the first two. The thoughts we have, the images we hold on to will powerfully influence the actions we take. If we held on to the angry thoughts and images about our crazy boss, we might be tempted to let them know just how much they upset us. If we do this in a very destructive way it may end up costing us our jobs. In essence, we will let their treatment of us make us emotionally sick, eventually physically sick and eventually cost us our employment. If, conversely, we have the images of compassion and understanding in our heads, we will be able to express ourselves in a far more constructive manner. This will not only decrease the chances of the situation ending poorly, but may increase the chance of the situation ending well. It could lead to better treatment from your boss and a better relationship with them.

This week let us focus on the three things we can control and take our energy off the things we cannot control.

CLICK HERE TO GET NEIL’S BOOK FULL OF IDEAS TO MAKE YOUR LIFE AMAZING

WHAT ARE YOURS?

This is a simple truth we don’t always appreciate. Our strongest thoughts, which we can call our beliefs, tend to lead our lives.

Scientists estimate we think 60,000 thoughts per day. Ironically, they also estimate that 95% of those thoughts are ones we thought the day before. When you consider we often drive the same way to work, sleep on the same side of the bed and a thousand other habitual things every day, it is not that surprising.

Here is another interesting fact, a lot of our thoughts are contrary. We are taught haste makes waste, but we are also taught he who hesitates is lost. Is it any wonder our lives can seem chaotic at times?

Of the thoughts that fit into the subconscious 95% we repeat everyday, how many are positive and empowering? This is another reason create a positive life mission statement or at the very least, print out an inspiring quote that you can read to start your day. If our life goes in the direction of our strongest thoughts, let us think thoughts that make us the strongest we can be.

IT’S ALL UP TO YOU

Building on what we learned last post – that fault and responsibility are not related – here is a prime example. Viewing life through these two different examples can make a world of difference. It can be related to the old adage “What people do to us is up to them. How we react to it is up to us.” This is easy to both read and understand intellectually, but try and live this way emotionally and you will discover it is not so easy.

What is vital to remember is that it is possible. We have control of our minds. For most of us we have relinquished that control, but we can get it back. Next time you find yourself upset due to some outside circumstance or some socially challenged individual, try saying to yourself, or better yet out loud, “I am really pissing myself off through this person!” If you are anything like me, you might chuckle at the absurd sounding nature of that statement, but sooner or later you will see the grain of truth in it.

Another great thing to follow up with is to imagine what possible reason that person could be acting like that. For example, when Margie and I are driving along, (Ok I am the driving and she is the along) and someone cuts us off to get that one car ahead before the red light, I often look at her and say, “Maybe they have to poop.” Certainly not the most eloquent option, but I am sure we can all relate having to hurry for just such a reason.

It helps you give the other party a certain benefit of the doubt. It doing so, it helps us get a little less upset. This is not to say you should let people treat you anyway or do whatever they like to you. What we are trying to do is lessen the effect their actions have on us.

Taking control of your mind and emotions is neither quick or easy, but with time and effort it can certainly pay dividends with reduced stress and mental anxiety. Try these simple tools to get started. Feel free to share your ideas in the comments below!