How to Weed Out Negative Thoughts

Lately hubby and I have been on a journey of becoming. Becoming the people we want to be and attracting the life we want to have. My last 2 posts sharing what we have been learning and doing are How to Cultivate your Conscience and How to Adopt an Attitude of Gratitude. As we have progressed  we feel we have been led step by step and have been really excited to find what we need to continue learning and growing. Next we found a program by a man named John Kehoe and he teaches about taking possession of your mind and gives tools to help you do it. He speaks of weeding out the negative thoughts which come from your subconscious and trick you into believing your fears, doubts, anxieties and insecurities. He says that we cant believe everything our mind thinks, It is healthy to question our perception of reality and doubt our doubts.

 There are 4 strategies of how to weed out these negative thoughts:

1. Cut it off - change it into a completely different thought
2. Observe the negative thought and label it- "Oh that is just a negative thought"
3. Exaggerate the thought into ridiculous
4. Opposite technique - plant an opposite thought

An example of when I've used these techniques was recently I had booked a connecting flight interstate and I only had 20 mins for the layover. I had no booked baggage and was using the same airline, so it was just a matter of entering the terminal and walking to another gate and getting back on. However, that night I woke up at 2am with a real feeling of dread. I began to panic and berate myself for even thinking this was possible. I was telling myself that not only would I miss it but it was the last flight of this airline for the night. Suddenly I started to realise I needed to get hold of my thoughts if I was ever going to go back to sleep. I observed the thoughts, realising they were negative and unhelpful. Then I exaggerated my thinking into I would be stuck in the airport forever and this would become my new home, then I began to plant opposite thoughts with "you can do it" and the airline have set this up for this very purpose and I visualised myself calmly walking from one gate to the other. I was able to go back to sleep and of course on the day, that is exactly what happened.

Our mind is in constant motion and we can begin to get control as soon as we recognise we've lost control. This takes practice but I've been surprised how quickly I've seen results. Our mind is like an out of control toddler who is used to doing whatever it wants and will put up a fight to being tamed but I can see that I am becoming more aware and jumping in quicker when my thoughts get carried away and go running off wildly into some unhelpful direction.

Some of the tools we have been using are visualisation where you can see yourself doing things in your mind- this needs to be in the present tense, seeding which is manifesting the feeling; also in present tense, using self talk and affirmations and using deep breathing which immediately relaxes and slows down our thought processes. Other tools, that we have added to the mix are: looking for things to be grateful for, studying our scriptures/uplifting material daily, looking for opportunities to give/serve others, paying a 10% tithing to a local charity (in our situation its our church) and prayer and fasting. We find these last few tools give us the strength and power from a higher source to keep going.

This scripture; we reap what we sow in Galatians 6:7 has made me consider that as we sow thoughts of negativity and self doubt then that is what we will get ; a life of fears and doubts. This along with Proverbs 23:7: as a man thinketh so he is, has made me realise that we have a lot more say over our lives, if we choose to, than what I previously realised. I was going about my life believing that life just happens to me and I have very little and often no say in the circumstances I found myself in. Even though I know that using our agency is a big part of this life, I hadn't really understood it to mean we get to choose what direction life takes us. I'm so grateful that we have been led to understand this and we can feel the power that is transforming our lives and leading us forward on to an amazing life of abundance and joy.