Think About This
For someone who just released her first self-help book, makes a living as a seasoned psychotherapist, and is launching a website for digital courses on self-help and personal growth topics in a matter of weeks, I am having far too many negative thoughts, and much too many sleepless nights.
I’ve been feeling a lot of fear lately, which keeps me awake. Mostly due to being alone around the clock while on this nomadically northeast adventure. My two cats are great, for sure, but our conversations are limited due to some language barriers.
The fear also crept in because of some not-so-desirable things happening for me since I’ve been on this adventure. Things I did not see coming, things for which I did not plan. Over the last few years I’ve learned that historically, my go to mind set when the not-so-desirable happens, is to wrestle with the things, to judge and shame myself because of the things, to fear the things, to put up my dukes and wrap myself with resistance because of the things, and to fixate on and try to fix all the things. It is here where I’m learning the delicious art of letting go. For so many years prior to now, letting go was something I didn’t really understand, therefore I didn’t know how to do it. So I held on instead.
Early this morning I pulled the blanket from my bed, wrapped it around me and piled myself on to the sofa so I could stare at a different ceiling. And I got busy thinking. My book, as well as one of my digital courses dives rather deeply into one of my therapy methods which outlines how our thoughts are the drivers of our everyday outcomes. Our thoughts happen first, our outcomes follow suit. However, what we typically do as humans is generate thoughts that are in reaction to our daily outcomes. Something happens, and our thoughts become directed by what happens, we get consumed with thoughts of problem solving or hiding, and by doing so, we open ourselves to likely attract more of that not-so-desirable outcome. Because, in fact, contrary to our tendencies, thoughts do come first, and our everyday outcomes follow suit, not the other way around.
Let me be clear, there are a lot of things out there over which we have no control, that are not to be put in the category of “everyday outcomes” and our thoughts will, indeed, be in response to those things, not the driver of those things. We don’t think our way to the death of a loved one, or being stolen from financially or physically, but we do have managerial power over how our thoughts flow after loss and trauma. With a strong therapist, healthy processing and thought direction can lead us to healing and wellness.
Join me, will you? I need the company. Let’s guide our thoughts today, away from small and punitive all the way to big, bright, healthy, lovely, dreamy. If you are in a situation today that is not-so-desirable, allow yourself to let go anyway, to choose joyful and loving and lifted thoughts and feelings. Let go of your resistance, your defensiveness, your inner dialogue that is shaming and cruel to you. Realize that there is no conflict here. Let go of trying to appeal to everyone else before yourself. Let go of fear. Welcome in healing and healthier thoughts. And if you’d like to take this game up a bit, rethink about your not-so-pleasant situation. Come up with a new way to look at it, a new way to experience it, ideally a way that inspires productive and strong thoughts and feelings and therefore, inspired action, desired change. YOU are the writer of this story, your very own mastermind. You are who holds beliefs about yourself and you make them come true. If we are capable of drawing less than desirable situations to ourselves because subconsciously we become consumed with the undesirable, then we can also pull the dreamiest outcomes our way by thinking differently about the undesirable, turning it into something we are experiencing so as to learn and apply better thoughts, so as to attract more of the desirable, so as to live all of our dreams.
What if everything is actually working out? What if things are actually happening FOR you, not TO you? What if this is just a smaller piece of a much bigger path? What if this is just the gloomier page of a truly happy story? Our thoughts are energetic forces and our feelings are magnetic pulls. Our thoughts absolutely determine our everyday experiences. Adjusting our thoughts is a daily practice. It’s a birthright, joy. Think about that.
In wellness,
Beth Clardy Lewis
