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Well the year is almost done and I am hoping that 2010 is a better year than this one was. They say that things happen in “3’s” and after the last couple of months or so I am starting to believe in this saying. I find it somewhat ironic that I started this blog about positive thinking and using the power of the mind to change your life just as a couple of minor calamities befell me.

You see back along I was performing at an awards ceremony and a PA speaker was pulled down on to my head resulting in a trip to casualty and concussion. Due to the after effects form this accident (that I am still suffering from) I had to start employing a fair degree of positive thinking to help cope with my mental state. Hence starting this website and becoming involved in this area.

Next up was the flood that occurred in my apartment which I mentioned in a post. Yes it was a shock and a hassle (still can’t use the room) but I tried to put it in perspective and realise it is only a temporary problem from which I will get a completely re-carpeted flat!

And just to round things off nicely, my third episode occurred on Christmas eve whilst I was playing in a local pub. After we’d finished playing I suddenly became aware that my jacket was missing. I couldn’t find it anywhere and it had both my car and apartment keys in it. It became clear that it had been stolen and even clearer that I would have to leave my car illegally parked and would not be able to get in to my apartment. On Christmas day.

I had planned to drive to my family’s for Christmas, but this now looked doubtful. I realised that I really had to get into my flat as the de-humidifier that was drying the flooded room would possibly over flow, so couldn’t be left on for too long. So the only option was to smash a window to gain entry. I enlisted the help of the drummer (they relish this sort of thing) and got in.

Next day I boarded up the window and tried to think positively about the situation. I had no food in the house as I assumed I was going away, shops were shut and couldn’t leave the house as I wouldn’t be able to get back in due to the communal front door.My spare keys were at a friends house and he was away for Christmas for a few days.

As of today, I have got my keys for the apartment, refitted a new pane of glass and had my car towed to the garage where they recoded the immobilizer. This has been an expensive an inconvenient time, especially as it was Christmas. Despite all this I have used positive thinking techniques to maintain my positive outlook even though you despair of the sort of people who seem to set out to deliberately make your life difficult and unnecessarily expensive.

You just have to not let it get you down or think that someone’s put some kind of “hex”on you-it purely and simply a run of bad luck which, all things being equal, will result in some good luck come your way in the future. I truly believe this, after all I am a positive thinker.

Here’s to your positive attitude and thinking bringing you all you desire in 2010!

There are many ways to lose your sense of self-esteem but whatever happens, we should really try not to lose our own sense of self, that knowledge of who we really are underneath.

So what can we do to raise our self knowledge and put ourselves on the path to a fulfilled life?

1. Know your purpose

Maybe you are wandering through life with no real direction – hoping that happiness, health and prosperity will someday  come your way? Identify your life purpose or mission statement and you will have your own unique inner compass that will lead you in the right direction every time.
This may seem difficult at first when you see yourself as being in a tight or even dead end. Just make a commitment to a change of some sort, and see where it takes you. Even if you make a few wrong turns, it will eventually get you on the right path.

2. Know your values

What do you value most? List of your top 5 values. Some examples are security, freedom, family, spiritual development, learning. Check this against a list of personal goals. If any goal doesn’t align with any of your top five values – you may want to reconsider it or revise it.
The number shouldn’t discourage you, instead it should motivate you to do more than you ever dream of.

3. Know your needs

We all have personal needs. This is not selfish but an essential part of our character that can leave us unfulfilled if they are not met. Do you have a need to be acknowledged, to be right, to be in control, to be loved? There are so many people who lived their lives without realizing their dreams and most of them end up being stressed or even depressed for that matter. List your top four needs and take steps to get them satisfied.

4. Know your passions

We all have interests and passions in life and knowing what these are is a step toward self-knowledge. Our passions are like stepping stones to self-fulfillment as they map our characters and help to show us who we really are. By pursuing our passions we express ourselves and help us develop into the people we want to be.

5. Live from the inside out.

Increase your awareness of your inner wisdom by regularly reflecting in silence. If you live in a noisy city environment,get out and commune with nature. Breathe deeply to quiet your distracted mind by using meditation techniques. Or simply play some soothing music or read, both solitary activities that will clear the mind.

6. Honor your strengths

What are your positive traits? What special talents do you have? List three – if you get stuck, ask those closest to you to help identify these. Are you imaginative, witty, good with your hands? Find ways to express your authentic self through your strengths. You can increase your self-confidence when you can share what you know to others.

7. Serve others

When you live authentically, you may find that you develop an interconnected sense of being. When you are true to who you are, living your purpose and giving of your talents to the world around you, you give back in service what you came to share with others -your spirit – your essence. The rewards for sharing your gifts with those close to you is indeed rewarding, much more if it were to be the eyes of a stranger who appreciates what you have done to them.

Affirmations are little sentences that we either think or say out loud to ourselves on a repeated basis at certain times throughout the day. Sounds pretty simple and straightforward doesn’t it? Well it is but the affirmations have to be worded correctly and said with the right positive mindset and belief or they will have no effect. The words themselves need to be imbued with real intention and feeling or they won’t be accepted as fact by the all-believing subconscious mind.

So how should we structure our affirmations? They have to be phrased in positive words in order to obtain positive results. If you mix a positive work with a negative one in the same sentence, the subconscious mind will perceive this as a mixed message and will consequently not be able to work out what it means. It may therefore actually interpret it as a negative affirmation rather than a positive one.

As an example take these two sentences:-

“I am not weak anymore”

“I am strong and powerful”

Both these phrases convey the same sentiment on the face of it but the first uses a negative word, creating a mental image of weakness in the mind. This is an example of the wording being wrong, whereas the second sentence is correctly structured. It conveys an image of strength as it contains only positive descriptive words.

As mentioned above, you also have to use all the tricks at your disposal to embed the message you want into your subconscious. This means creating the appropriate visualizations to accompany the affirmations you make, as well as saying  the words with strength of will, having faith in your desired outcome and persistence.

You also need to make sure that the affirmation you chose is something that you are comfortable with otherwise it may not work for you or might result in an undesired outcome. Make sure the words you choose are positive rather than negative and you will be able to let your thoughts build the life you want.

Here are some good positive affirmations:

Day by day I am becoming happier and more satisfied.

Love is filling my life now.

Healing energy is constantly filling every pore of my body.

I always stay calm and in control of myself, in every situation and in all circumstances.

Loving myself heals my life. I nourish my mind, body and soul.

I am my own unique self – special, creative and wonderful.

When I believe in myself, so do others.

I choose to make positive healthy choices for myself.

I trust in the process of life.

Life is a joy filled with delightful surprises.

These are chosen just as examples to get you started and cover different situations. There is no rule about when or how many times you should repeat them. Just be sure to do them every day using the guidelines above, and positive change in your life cannot fail to be the result.

Here’s another subject that is kind of linked the previous post about the Law of  Attraction. What I want to discuss is affirmations. What are affirmations you may ask? The word itself is defined as “a declaration that something is true” or in the New Age sense, simply the practice of positive thinking. So when people talk about practicing their affirmations, they are referring to the practice of saying positive declarations to themselves in the hope that the words they repeat will somehow come true for them.

But does any of this actually work and if so, how?

Well let’s deal with the theory behind it first. It is believed that it is possible influence the subconscious part of our minds with thoughts and utterances, if the thoughts or words it is presented with are repeated often enough. As human beings we tend to let thoughts of the more negative kind, worries, fears, anger etc. whirl around our minds in a constant inner conversation. Because this inner chatter is constant, and negative, it begins to get embedded in our subconscious as real and the truth, which in turn affects our actions and opinions.

Because the subconscious mind makes no distinction between a “good” thought or a “bad” one, it will diligently accept what it is fed, and gets to work try to align these words and thoughts into a reality for the person saying or thinking them. As you can see, it is very important, if this is the case, to be careful of what the subconscious is exposed to, as it will carry out this process of  “thought alignment” whether you want it to or not. It is very powerful in this respect.

Most of the thoughts formed through thinking we are not even aware we have made, which makes it all the more important to learn how to control our thoughts. Things we hear and see outside our control often determine what we think about, limiting our freedom of thought. Only through learning techniques that teach us to consciously choose words and phrases that we want our subconscious minds to receive and get to work on, can we bring about change in the ways we think and act, creating new circumstances and situations in our lives (see Law of Attraction).

The way this is done is through the repetition of certain phrases and are called Affirmations. They are repeated on a regular daily basis at certain times and (after 20-30 days apparently) sink into the subconscious ready for it to manifest their intentions.

The affirmations have to be said with heartfelt feeling and true belief (ie. with as much feeling as the negative stuff has) or the subconscious won’t accept them as real. The phrases and words also need to be totally unambiguous, by which I mean they must have no conflicting words or contradictory messages. Straight to the point simplicity is the key.

As for whether they work or not I don’t know. Some say they do and others not. Its probably very much down to the individual and the extent to which they use the techniques correctly and their faith in them. All I can say is that they sure seen to work all too easily for creating negative realities, so I see absolutely no reason why they should not work in the reverse sense just as effectively. I will suggest some useful positive affirmations in a future post.

Not long after becoming involved in the self-development/positive thinking area I came across a phrase that I had seen a number of times in the past but never taken any notice of. I’m referring, of course, to something called “The Law of Attraction”. I have to say I am usually none too struck on these kind of “new age” kind of philosophies that have no real scientific or hard anecdotal evidence, and are usually based on some kind of superstitious belief or half baked mysticism.

But the sheer weight of interest that there appears to be out there has eventually brought me round to the point where it needs some investigation and how it relates to the topics within this blog. A good place to start would be with a quote from the great Jim Rohn who says:” Success is not be pursued, it is to be attracted by the person you become”. Read that  again. It is a very profound statement, which kind of reverses the accepted notion that people need to get motivated to go after success, like it was some kind of quest.

Rather he is saying that if you concentrate on the qualities and attributes you acquire on your journey, you can’t help but arrive at your intended destination. I think! Whatever it is that you give your attention, focus and energy to will naturally be “attracted” to you because it is a like force. Of course this can either work in a positive, life-fulfilling manner or in a negative one where whatever negative thoughts you dwell on manifest themselves in unhappiness with your lot.

Unfortunately a lot of what we think to ourselves about day-to-day is not of a positive nature. I don’t know why, but our default mental self-talk setting is set negatively. Maybe its some kind of  self-protection that developed to keep us in our comfort zones from times when the world was a much more dangerous place than it is now. The problem is that this Law of Attraction (which is governed by our subconscious) doesn’t  distinguish between good thoughts or bad ones and embeds them regardless. Basically, whatever you think you will attract.

So how can we develop “success thinking”? You simply have to ask yourself-”What, exactly, is it I really want?” Define and write down exactly what it is you want to achieve in every aspect of your life. This would include your home and family life, business, personal goals and ambitions etc. Don’t hold back on this, be brutally honest about your hopes and dreams in an ideal world, even if they seem too far fetched and unrealistic to your negatively programmed subconscious.

Instead, use techniques like affirmations or visualization to literally flood your mind with positive, motivating thoughts and feelings, that over time will be accepted as fact by your subconcious. This will lead to a process whereby you begin to develop a success thinking habit that will ultimately attract the things that you told yourself you were going to achieve.