The Power of a Positive Mind

Firstly, I want to say a big thank you for the response I got to my last blog, as I said it was very scary, but the messages and conversations I’ve received and had as a result of that blog have been very comforting. I would also like to try and keep on the theme of mental health and relate it to how we can make ourselves feel better by achieving our goals, and a great way to help us do that is with a positive mental attitude.

I want to share a tool with you at the beginning that doesn’t necessarily fit the theme of the blog but is something I want you all to try, Visualisation can be the biggest tool to help us a achieve a goal, it helps us to see the end picture and helps to keep motivation high. You won’t lose sight of why you’re struggling right now, because let’s face it, anything worth achieving is going to bring some form of struggle. I can very much relate with this at the minute, one of my main goals which I won’t share with you requires A LOT of struggles, and there are times when I feel beaten down by it, I feel like giving up, but by visualizing myself at the end of this journey I can see it will be worth it. Don’t lose sight of what it is you want to achieve, and another good tool to help you keep in this mindset is by taking some time to write down your feelings at the beginning of your journey. Our minds can be very fickle and ruled by the emotions of the day, by writing down our feelings at the start, we have those notes ready to read back and put us into the mindset we were at the beginning. This is something I like to try and share with people who want to leave our little community if they haven’t yet reached the place they want to be.

But what if we could try and top these negative emotions altogether? Now that would be nice, and I’m not going to tell you a magic secret to stop outside influences affecting us so much, but hopefully what I can do is help you to look at the situations that effect our emotions so negatively, a little bit differently. Each one of us will face some level of adversity on a weekly basis, whether it’s a disgruntled co-worker or an angry spouse, and naturally our first response is to match their negativity with equal or greater negativity, we can become quite selfish in these moments and jump onto the defensive and instantly push back, but ask yourself, how did this situation come about? Before I go any further, I have to admit some people are just wankers, and perhaps are too far gone for any help at this stage, but they were once a baby with a blank slate of a mind, and their experiences and situations have moulded them into the wanker you see before you, so don’t try and fix them or help them, but try and have some sympathy that they’ve had a tough ride, just like you may have done also.

Roald Dahl said “If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely”, funnily enough I have this on my bedroom wall at home, but until a very short time ago I never really looked at this as the good advice that it is, you’d be surprised how many of the situations I mentioned above can be avoided if you try to take this advice on board, positivity breads positivity, its infectious, and your life and the people who you surround yourself with no doubt be affected by the positivity you put into the world. Our circumstances can be out of our control, but our thoughts and our emotions don’t have to be, if you think negatively, you’ll act negatively, and the people around us with respond negatively, they may not even want to be around you at all.

In the words of Jordan Peterson “life is suffering”, you may be having a bad day and there will be plenty more of them around the corner, but the way you respond to that bad day is up to you! Are you going to get down?, inflate your victim complex, and say woe is me?, or are you going to pick yourself up and try make your day better with your actions, and even improve the days of the people around you, negativity is a black hole that can begin to suck everyone in, you have a bad day at work and take that home with you, then your partner will receive negativity and their day becomes bad because they’re arguing with you, then perhaps they’ll punish the kids too harshly, and so on and so forth. Let me remind you of something I said in the last blog; “ be the person people can turn to in a crisis”, in this case the crisis is negativity, are you going to let it drag you down?, or are you going to put a big smile on your face, dust yourself off and be the one who can fix the shit situation you’ve found yourself in!.

I seem to be loving my quotes today so I’m going to carry them on, and if you ever feel too down to pick yourself up, this is the one I want you to come back to; “every man has 2 lives, the second one begins when he realises he only has one”, don’t’ waste it being that wanker at work.

I want to tie a lot of this together, so lastly, believe in yourself. My last blog focussed very much on how I was feeling down on myself and how I didn’t feel good enough, and whether I believe it or not, I’m going to start telling myself that I am good enough, and maybe tomorrow I’ll start to believe it a little more, and who knows, a year from now I might feel good enough, perhaps even believe I’m the good person that I get flashes of sometimes, and I also want you to visualize the person you’ll be if you do the same. With that amount of self-belief, no goal will seem to out of reach and no negativity will bring you down, the mind is the most powerful tool we have, fill it with positivity!

Aaron

P.s. If you see me jumping around, being over excited or acting silly, and it seems a little forced or over the top, maybe it is, but don’t get annoyed or irritated, it could be more forced then you care to realise, so why not just join in instead, and lets have a positive day together.