"Real power comes by empowering others." -Denis Waitley
How can empowering your thoughts enhance your life, mental well-being and overall quality of life? Why is it important to be mindful of your thoughts and to utilize them in a constructive and mindful manner? Through my years of study and integration of different healing and spiritual modalities, leadership training and life experience, I’ve come to believe that thoughts are things. So, if everything is energy, and energy vibrates at certain frequencies, then our thoughts also create a frequency.
Years ago, I delved into the idea of manifestation and creating my reality. When I went down this path, the first thing I learned was to be cognizant of the thoughts I was thinking and the stories I was telling myself. To be self-aware of the unconscious beliefs I had adopted up to that point. Over time, I learned some ways to shift my thoughts from those of disempowerment and unworthiness to empowerment and positive reinforcement. Here are five ways to empower your thoughts.
1. Positive Affirmations. When I first started on this path the first step was to identify the thoughts or beliefs that held me back. Once I did, affirmations became a daily tool to reprogram my thoughts and beliefs into the life I desired. It’s not easy to just stop one thought or belief, I had to replace it. So if one of my limiting thoughts were “I’m not good enough to…(insert thing)” I needed to replace it with something like “I deserve and am worthy of…(insert thing).” This took a while because our brains create neuropathways when we think or reinforce a thought process. Affirmations helped me create new neuropathways. The key is to infuse the affirmations with emotion, passion, visualization and desire. I loved writing them down and looking at them daily. I also would record them in my voice and listen to them.
2. Mindfulness and Meditation. I’m a thinker. My thoughts spin and spin, creating, worrying, making lists and problem solving. The first time I had heard about meditation was in a high school health class. The teacher taught us how to focus on our breathing, while counting to help us reduce stress. Being the hippy, crystal loving teenager that I was, I took it to the next lever and devoured all the books I could on meditation. What I realized was it took me a while to quiet my mind. It took practice and focus. One of the ways I did this was to focus on my breathing, counting in and out. This allowed my brain to focus on something other than all the spinning thoughts. I then added my affirmations as into my mediations. Guided meditations were another way that helped me to focus. Eventually I was able to quiet my mind without the tools. To just sit in the silence and just be. Practicing meditation and mindfulness helped me to control my thoughts. When focusing on the present moment, I was able to reduce stress and anxiety while allowing myself to reflect on my thoughts without becoming attached and overwhelmed by negative emotions. It helps me to create the reality I want to live in.
3. Reading and Learning. I’ve always been a magnet for information. I love to learn how things work, how people think and learning different perspectives. My nose was always in a book. Still is. I’ve always felt that by expanding my knowledge and understanding through reading and learning, empowered my thoughts though new insights and perspectives. There are many ways to do this besides books, especially in this age of information. We also have articles, blogs and videos to help stimulate the mind to become more informed. Continuous learning helps us to develop a more informed and empowered mindset.
4. Set Goals and Visualize Success. To be honest, visualization doesn’t come easily for me. My brain doesn’t construct movie screen types of images, it creates more of thought constructs. For the longest time, I felt as if something was wrong with me since everything told me to “imagine or visualize”. It took me a while to realize that everyone visualizes differently. The funny thing is, I am a visual learner. Give me a video, diagram or picture, or something concrete to follow, I’m all for it. Show me how to do it. So, creating vision boards or writing down my goals and looking at them daily helps solidify that which I want to create. I learned to set clear, achievable goals and then add some sort of visual to reinforce those goals. I know that some people visualize easily and that’s great! I think having a clear vision of what I want to create or achieve makes it easier to focus my thoughts and actions toward those goals. One of the tricks I learned when focusing and visualizing on what I wanted to manifest, is to bring up the emotion of how it would feel to have or reach that goal. Act and feel as if that goal is achieved in the present moment. Live it before it manifests. I was always taught seeing is believing, but what if believing is actually seeing?
5. Be Surrounded by Positive People and Mentors. Here’s the thing. The people we spend time with and learn from can have a significant impact on our thoughts. I feel that it’s important that we surround ourselves with positive, supportive people who not only encourage us, but also inspire. Look for people who have done what you want to do and learn from them. Look for mentors who sincerely want success for others just as much as themselves. Find friends and colleagues who are like minded and growth orientated. Only interact with media that is uplifting and delete anything toxic, and fear based. In addition, create a positive physical environment that incorporates elements that bring joy, creativity and positivity. Plants and artwork are good examples. I’ve been extremely blessed with amazing friends, family and professional colleagues who encouraged, inspired and believed in me.
Here’s a secret. I also had to learn to encourage, inspire and believe in myself. I had to learn and adopt practices to empower my thoughts by integrating these practices into my daily routine. This helped me to foster a more empowered and positive mindset. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t had hardship, disappointments or failures in my life. But having these tools of empowerment helps me deal with the reality of having a human life with all the human messiness. Feeling empowered has become a choice for me. I believe we all deserve to live an empowered life.
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