Your Stories Are Powerful!

Hello Friends,

Welcome back to the concluding part of the series on the power of our thoughts and how to make it work for us positively.

Let's dive right into it...

Adopting a New Mindset

To break the cycle of negative stories you tell yourself, you will need to adopt a completely new mindset.

Adopting a new mindset will not happen overnight. It will take time, perseverance, and your full commitment. There will be days where you feel like your mindset is never going to change, no matter how much effort you put in. The secret is to keep pushing through even when it feels hopeless. Below are the steps to take:

1. Choose an “I Can” and “I Will” Mindset

To adopt a new mindset, you have to ditch the “I can’t” mindset and ?choose the “I can” and “I will” mindset. Remember Obama’s quote, “Yes we can” that made his election speech very popular. That is? the kind of mindset to adopt. As you keep telling your mind that you can and will make a change and get things done, gradually the change will happen.

2. Meditate

Meditation is one of the best activities that will change your mindset. It teaches you how to live in the present and appreciate the world around you.

Just a 5-10 minutes of meditation each day will help keep you grounded. You can start with guided meditations and as you get used to it, you can then have your own self-guided meditation session.

3. Challenge Those Limiting Beliefs

The limiting beliefs you hold about yourself will stop you from living the life you desire. Some of those beliefs could be: “I am not good enough”, or “I don’t deserve to be happy” or “no one loves me”.

Write down these limiting beliefs and challenge them by asking yourself: why am I not good enough? Why don’t I deserve to be happy? Why does it seem no one loves me?

Then go ahead and counter these beliefs with positives ones. Remind yourself of your good qualities, skills, and all of the things you have achieved so far.

4. Change Your Self-Talk

Just like challenging your beliefs, you also need to change your self-talk. How you talk about yourself matters a lot. Learn to identify when you are putting yourself down and being negative. Then, instantly change it to a compliment. For example:

Negative thought: “I always fail, I’ll never be good enough.”

Positive thought: “I fail just like everyone does. I am good enough and I will succeed.”

As you get better at identifying when this is happening, the easier it will become to start focusing on the positive.

5. Surround Yourself With A Good Support Network

Surrounding yourself with a good support network will make the journey to a changed mindset easier.

You can confide in someone you trust and let them know what you are trying to achieve. Ask the person to point out when they notice you are talking negatively about yourself, or about a situation.

6. Practice Self-Care

The importance of self-care cannot be over-emphasized. Looking after yourself makes you feel happier and more fulfilled, and it also drives home the fact that ou are important too.

7. Try Out New Things

When you try something new, it creates excitement within. It could be a starting a course, learning a new skill, or whatever you desire. This increases your happiness and makes you see things in a much more positive light.

Try to focus on one method at a time. If you attempt to do too much too soon, you will ultimately fail and go straight back to that negative mindset.

?

Addressing Past Trauma

The stories you tell yourself are tied into the experiences you have gone through. If you have suffered trauma in your childhood, adolescence, or even in your adult life, it would impact on the story you tell yourself.

Depending on the severity of the trauma you experienced, it may take a while to recover from it. However, here are some ways you can address it:

Seek Professional Help

Seeing a therapist is the beginning of your journey to healing. Deeply rooted trauma such as sexual assault, childhood neglect, etc cannot be fixed on your own. You will need a professional who can help you go through your thoughts and feelings.

Allow Yourself to Truly Feel

If you want to overcome trauma, then you need to allow yourself to truly feel all the emotions tied into it. You should not push your thoughts and feelings away, instead you should acknowledge them. If you need to cry, allow yourself to cry; If you feel anger, accept and acknowledge it. When you allow yourself to feel those negative emotions, they begin to lose their power over you.

When you let yourself truly feel, it gives you back control over your life. Your emotions won’t rule you anymore, and the trauma will have less of a hold over you.

Practice Self-Compassion

Many people who experienced trauma mostly blame themselves for what happened. However, this will not change the situation. You have to take it easy on yourself for any mistakes that you may have made. You are human and that means sometimes you will get it wrong and do things you regret. The most important thing is to learn from the mistakes.

Always remind yourself that you are not responsible for other people’s actions.

Forgive Those Who Hurt You

Many people struggle with forgiveness. I heard of a man who has a diary of people who offended him as far back as 5 years. Forgiveness is for you rather than the one who hurt you. It doesn’t mean you are okay with what happened, rather you choose to live in peace and not let past occurrences control you. Forgiveness sets you free from the trauma and allows you to move on with greater clarity. It may take time to forgive, however it will be worth it in the long run.

Finally…

Breaking the cycle of telling yourself negative stories cannot be complete without:

Having Realistic Expectations

As you work towards a more positive mindset, you have to set realistic expectations. ?If you expect too much, it will lead to disappointment and in turn increase those negative thoughts. This will cause you to give up and think you are not just good enough to change.

However, when you have realistic expectations, you will avoid becoming frustrated. Take it one day at a time. Accept that some days you will find it easier to maintain your new habits than other days. Find a way around your limitations and you will start to feel more empowered and positive.

Setting Realistic Personal Boundaries

You have to set realistic personal boundaries, that is, the things that you are willing to accept and not accept. The types of personal boundaries you can set are:

• Emotional – to protect your feelings
• Physical – to protect your physical space (privacy)
• Relationship – to protect your circle of influence
• Financial – to define how you save, spend and lend money

?

Breaking the cycle of negative stories is not going to be a walk-in-the-park. You have to be patient and stay committed. Like the good old saying, “nothing good comes easy.” However, if you follow these steps, your negative stories will naturally become more positive.

Till next time...

Love and light,

Zinny Onuiri - The Mind Alchemist

Kindly share your thoughts and repost for someone in your network.

?

?