Positive Thinking Tips

Do positive self affirmations really have any positive effect? The short answer is ‘No’ – unless you have a few years to spare and a heavy-duty supply of perseverance. The problem is that self-affirmation is directed at your conscious mind and, sadly, the conscious mind has absolutely nothing to do with the way you behave, how you react to people and situations, how you see life in general or, more importantly, the way in which you view yourself. However, as we’ve said, if you throw enough muck at your conscious mind, sooner or later – in fact, definitely later – some of that mud will eventually stick and make some sort of reasonable impression on your subconscious mind. However, you’d have to stick with it incessantly and, even then, you’d be faced with an uphill battle because your subconscious mind simply won’t believe what you’re trying to tell it if its view of reality is different. Why? Your subconscious mind dictates your beliefs, behaviours and reactions and actually creates your own personal version of reality. Positive-affirmation is like trying to throw snowballs at hell’s fiery furnace!!

I often find it difficult to explore some of the key concepts in what I might call personal development or self improvement given that ordinary words and language are inadequate. By way of example, do the words ‘universal energy’ properly capture the fact that we are energy, we live in a world and universe comprised solely of vibrating energy and that energy is responsive? Does the sobriquet ‘Law of Attraction’ have the same meaning for different people? And where are the boundaries between mind, body and spirit?

I find it perculiar. I know plenty of people who tell me that they simply cannot how to relax. One guy told me that he feels guilty sitting relaxing on a Saturday – he feels compelled to fly around the house or garden hell bent on finding something to do. Another guy recently revealed that, whilst Saturday morning is his golf morning, and although he actually goes out on the course, he doesn’t really play! He can’t – his mind is stuck reliving everything that happened during last week or what’s happening the following week. He’s out on the course but, not only is he not chilled, he’s not even all there! Even worse, a guy who doesn’t have a care in the world – great job that he’s really on top of, great personal life, great everything, tells me that when he plays golf he actually feels guilty – feeling that he should be at home or in the office.

Almost as soon as the day swings into action it’s very easy to be overwhelmed by the routine, the urgent (not necessarily the important), this morning’s crisis or, most prevalent of all, useless thinking. Even if you have started your day properly, it is simply so easy to become submerged and revert to our default state of unfocused mindlessness.

There are occasions when we simply feel flat – perhaps not dejected, disillusioned or depressed, just plain flat, energy-less and disinterested. And even though I’ve been teaching my many personal development clients how to start each day by switching on their minds – and I do the same myself – sometimes, within no time at all, one ends up feeling, well, ‘I wish I was somewhere else!’ or ‘I don’t feel like doing this!’ I’m not talking about things going wrong with our day, I’m simply talking about what one client described like this: ‘I get into my office, full of beans, I sit down at my desk, open up my PC and, suddenly, it’s like I’m in a kind of daze.’

Unfortunately, normal people view life through dark glasses and, as a result, everything appears gloomier than it is. This is the norm because the normal mind is hard-wired to look at reality through our conditioning and it is more likely than not that the mind will pay attention to negative rather than positive conditioning. This mental shortcoming is what is keeping your life on hold.

If you’re into personal development or self improvement, you’ll have some understanding of the importance placed by many experts on being focused in the here and now. Ekhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’ emphasizes the virtues of what might be described as presence of mind. However, Tolle, together with other personal development ‘gurus’, doesn’t either adequately explain why ‘Now’ is so important or, indeed, offer practical advice on being more present.

The purpose of life is to be happy – at least according to the Dalai Lama. However, most people are not quite sure what happiness actually means. Is it having lots of nice things – nice home, vacation home, flashy car, designer clothes, exotic vacations? Because, certainly over the last number of years, plenty of people fell into the trap of evaluating their happiness based on their possessions – and comparing their ‘happiness’ to what others owned. I actually had a client telephone me at one point to tell me that his wife was going to leave him because she said and I quote ‘The neighbours go on better holidays!’ Wave her off, I said!

Are you happy with yourself and with your life? I suspect that there are things that you would want to alter in both your life and you, yourself – I’ve rarely met anyone who is truly happy. Of course, people frequently believe that if they improve themselves, get fit, buy a new car, have really cool holidays that, then, they’ll find happiness. That kind of ‘happy’, however, is transient and superficial. True happiness has got to be lasting and not based on having this or doing that.

Although the evidence of depression may be all too tangible in your life, depression is simply not real. If you’re suffering from depression, it’s just your imagination because depression is directly linked to your subconscious mind’s obsession with useless thoughts that you ‘learned’ during your formative years. It is normal for your subconscious mind to focus on the past – everyone’s does – it’s just that the garbage that yours is focused on is probably a little (or a lot) abnormal. This is not your fault – your subconscious mind was impressed with these thoughts by others, people and events that made you feel bad, guilty, upset during your childhood years.