Step one: manage your mind!
Many people frequently ask me how to get themselves out of negative and adverse conditions, and I tell them that prospering is truly an “inside” job and has far more to do with your thoughts than you might imagine.
The first place to start is with your thinking. Actions follow thoughts, so you must address what you are telling yourself about your circumstances and money. When you change your thinking, your attitude will change and then circumstances around you will begin to shift. Realize that your thoughts about your situation will direct the outcome, so learn to control your thought process.
Fear-based thoughts left unchecked will render you unable to act and frighten you to the point of believing there are no solutions. Catching those negative, fear-centered thoughts and changing them to positive ones is the first step to having a different, more favorable outcome. Believe it or not, the thoughts you hold on to will produce more of the same, meaning that what you focus on will create more of the outcome you seek. So each time you tell yourself that you are broke, have too much debt, are buried under adverse circumstances, etc., replace the negative thought with a more positive one. Here are some of my favorites:
- “Every day in every way things are getting better and better.”
- “Solutions are always finding me.”
- “I have plenty of money to spare and share.”
Fear-based thinking must be eliminated because nothing good comes from it except more things to be afraid of. Start training yourself to say that you have plenty, that good is always on its way, that having enough money is always the circumstance. In the beginning, this new way of thinking—replacing a fear-based thought with a positive thought—will feel very uncomfortable, but it must be done consistently for it to work and for you to develop new thought patterns. Most people focus on the negative, so we have to train ourselves away from negative thinking, similar to the mental training those preparing for a marathon have to do.
When retraining your mind, you have to be vigilant—catch yourself when you start buying into the negative and change it up. Once you start changing what you allow yourself to think, it will change the way you are feeling and then you will start to see solutions and opportunities that you could not see before.
How we think about our financial circumstances has everything to do with the outcomes that we create for ourselves. Gaining control of our thoughts and making them more positive improves every outcome.
As I said, retraining your mind is like any kind of training: it takes work and consistent effort, and yes, it gets a little bit easier the more you do it. I have been practicing this stuff for almost 40 years, and when I get really scared about something, I still have to catch myself when any negative thought tries to seep in. The trick is practice—the more you train your mind to think positively, the easier it will become.
Give it a try, and reach out to me on Sister Chat with questions or a report on how it’s going.
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