A few people have asked me how I keep up my positive attitude all the time. They think I don’t suffer or that I don’t have my “moments”. Little do they know I’m also human. Sometimes I have negative thoughts in my mind like everyone else. The only thing I do different is to not absorb the vibe or the feel those thoughts give me. You might ask, but how you do it?
Simple: don’t feed your negative thoughts.
If you want to improve yourself, the only thing you can do is to make the utmost effort to refine and purify your own thoughts. Master Ryuho Okawa
Imagine this scenario: You are having a nice day and out of nowhere this negative thought comes to mind reminding you of something in your life that makes you feel anxious or maybe sad. Your whole face changes. You are not smiling anymore. You are in deep thought of something you feel you can’t control. Then comes the spiral of memories, emotions and suddenly you are shifting away to a place where you can’t even recognize yourself.
What to do? What is the best solution here? Dig deep into why you feel this way or try to ignore this feeling? Neither.
Now, picture this: You remind yourself the last time someone gave you a compliment and that gives you a great smile on your face. You start walking and someone smile at you and you smile back. You think “Wow what a great day!”. Then you text a person you love “Have a beautiful day!” and then you keep thinking “I feel happy!”
How different is that? We are what we think!
Once a yogi teacher told me “Look at your negative thoughts like clouds. Observe them and acknowledge them. Try to realize how they make you feel and set them free”. Don’t overthink! Repeat: don’t overthink! I believe this is the best advice anyone has given me relating to this topic.
We can acknowledge to feel a certain way, but what we cannot do is feed this negative thought to more negative ones. We need to snap and say..”OK, thanks for coming, I’m aware, but it’s time to go”.
Sound simple, but it takes courage to do it. It’s more simple to feed the thought and go into a spiral. Acknowledging you CAN get out there and have some awareness of the situation can help you to have more positive thoughts.
You can say to yourself:
I love myself too much to ruin my day.
Come on, let’s cheer up!
We can do better than that.
or maybe thinking of something that makes you feel grateful to be alive.
I promise little by little you will start to feel the changes in your state of mind and your thoughts will be more pure and clear for you.
Happy thoughts! Remember YOU ARE what you think.
Cristina
