Why you need to pay attention to your thoughts

I’m going to kick this off with a Chinese proverb. ‘Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words. Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions. Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits. Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character. Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny.’

OK so this is a BIG subject and one that when you can REALLY grasp it, can completely change your life.  

You’ve all heard people saying that ‘thoughts become things’ I’m sure but never really looked into the practicalities of what that means, or considered it a bit woo so totally discounted it!

The way we think DIRECTLY affects our lives and this is something I was talking about a LOT at Positive Pants Planning Live last week.

There is SO much to explore so i’ll try to keep it as simple as possible for now.

Self fulfilling prophecy anyone?

It’s basically how we end up with self fulfilling prophecies, prove ourselves right and then repeat patterns that we don’t want in our lives.  

It creates coding in your subconscious that then affects what you do and how you behave.

TFAR

Thoughts directly influence the way you feel about something.

Feelings, or the way you specifically feel, about something influences the actions you then do or don’t take.

Those actions directly create the results that you see in your life.  You either do, or don’t have the outcome you wanted, or you have exactly the outcome you predicted, positive or negative.

Those results then reinforce your original thoughts, which in turn become your beliefs and form both thinking and behaviour habits.

Still with me?

Begin at the beginning

Essentially, if we look at this we can see that everything begins and ends with thoughts and beliefs yes?

So if we want to influence the way we feel about things or the actions that we take, what do we need to focus on changing?!

Your THOUGHTS and in turn your BELIEFS.

At the end of the day if you don’t believe something is possible for you then it really won’t be.  You will absolutely self-sabotage to prove yourself right!

LOA

This goes some way to explain the Law of Attraction in slightly more practical terms.

When you BELIEVE something can be yours it influences your thoughts, then your feelings, then your ACTIONS (which is the KEY piece of the puzzle that people often miss out when talking about LOA!) and in turn your results.

What this also does is tell your Reticular Activating System (RAS) what to filter out for you.  

Now what the heck is the RAS?

The RAS is a group of nerves at your brain stem and one of it’s (many) functions is essentially to act as your brain’s spam filter.

We’re bombarded on a second by second basis with millions of pieces of information to process that simply wouldn’t be possible.  It would be completely overwhelming sensory overload so the RAS gets to work to filter out what you need.

Those little moments where you see the right ad, hear the right conversation, meet the right person, you’re in a noisy crowded room and you still manage to hear your name, all those things.  You have essentially been telling it what to filter out for you.

The trouble is it’s based on any parameters that YOU give it and when you’re not aware of that that’s when things can get tricky.  

It’s based around YOUR value system, your beliefs and your thoughts.  It’s kind of that friend that’s desperately trying to please you but getting it really wrong sometimes.

It filters out all the evidence you need to reinforce what you’re asking it to.  It WANTS you to be right. So if you believe something about yourself it will make sure it shows you alllll the reasons you’re right and NONE of the evidence that you’re not.  It will show you black and white but none of the grey (unless you ask it to!). So you can see how this can go awry right?

BUT, the fun bit is that it’s all in your hands!

YOU get to tell it what you want.

This is where all the times i’ve told you that affirmations, meditation, visualisation aren’t woo woo becomes even more clear and you start to get on board my woo ‘what if’ train.

When you start to use these tools which i’ve covered before and use them regularly and start to shift your thinking you literally become a different person, and THAT person is the one who gets what they want out of life.  Who gets out of the frustration loop and stops patterns repeating themselves.

And hopefully it puts a little fire in your belly to work out what those thoughts and beliefs are that are keeping you stuck, so you can get to work changing them.

Hopefully it’s shown you the importance of setting proper goals, really being clear and KNOWING what you want and going through all the different processes of actually TELLING your brain what you want!

There are so many ways that our brain can work against us in this game but this is very much a way that we can start to get it to work WITH us and FOR us.

What do you tell yourself?

Think about what labels you’ve given yourself throughout your life.  Think about the ‘I always’ and ‘I never’ statements that you use about yourself.

Think about the beliefs you have around your business, catch yourself in those negative thought processes that you want to get rid of  so you can challenge them.

Start to look for any evidence you can to prove yourself wrong.

Little Exercise

So, to give you even more evidence spend a little time thinking about something you want to consider a ‘sign’.  

Something that will empirically prove to you that this is something you can do.  

So pick anything, keep it simple.  Let’s go with a fox for example. Wake up and think about how you want to see a fox today. You will start to notice all the times and occasions that you start to spot foxes.  You will start to notice it will be in adverts, images, shop display windows, logos, car stickers you’ll start to see it everywhere.

Once you’ve done that and you’re ‘in’ then do the important work.  Start telling your brain who you want to be, what you want to see, what you want to achieve and then let the magic happen.

If you know that now is the time to start changing things for yourself and want to explore this further, have any questions or want some accountability to make sure you’re doing the things you need to then please book in a free discovery call so we can see what needs to happen to get you from where you’re at right now, to the successful business owner you know you can be!!

Fx

Fran Excell, Subconscious Success Mentor – Helping Business Owners Overcome Self Sabotage & Get More Done In Less Time at www.franexcell.com

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