By HOW TO CHANGE YOUR THINKING WHEN YOU CAN’T CHANGE THE SITUATION
Angel Chernoff
Let me share a quick story and a powerful lesson with you…
“There’s a vivid, beautiful, priceless piece of art hanging right in front of you. It’s sophisticated and detailed – a painstaking labor of deep devotion and love. The colors and textures are like no other – they soar and dip, they shine bright and leap right out at you! And yet you choose to fixate your eyes on the tiny, dark housefly that has landed on the edge of this masterpiece. Why would you choose to do such a thing?”
She cracked a half smile in my direction and then shifted her gaze down to the ground.
“Look,” I said, “the point here is that there’s no possible way to be 100% certain about anything in this world. Life, like good art, is sophisticated, complex and unpredictable. So you’re left with a choice: either appreciate it and look for the beauty in it, or focus on the worst and dwell on it.”
“But if you expect the worst, you’re never disappointed,” she said under her breath.
“Yeah, but who really lives like that?” I replied. “No one – that’s who! People die slowly every day like that, without ever truly living!”
That’s the gist of a conversation I had recently with an attendee of our “Think Better, Live Better 2017” seminar (I’m sharing this with her full permission). She literally started the conversation by telling me that expecting negative things to happen is her way of coping with life’s challenges. If you can relate in any way at all, it’s time to revamp your mindset.
And make no misunderstanding about it, when you are feeling down in the dumps, the battle you are going through isn’t fueled by the words or actions of others, and it isn’t fueled by what did or didn’t happen in the past either. It’s fueled entirely by your mind that gives negativity a voice.
Believing in negative thoughts and acting on them is the single greatest barrier to living a good life.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the mind is your battleground. It’s the place where the fiercest and most ruthless conflict resides. It’s where half of the things you feared were going to happen, never actually happened. It’s where your expectations always get the best of you. It’s where you fall victim to your own train of thought time and time again.
And if you allow these self-defeating thoughts to dwell in your mind, they will succeed in robbing you of peace, joy, productivity, meaning, and ultimately your life. You will think yourself into endless disappointment, heartache, and even depression.
Bottom line: You are what you think! And you can’t change anything if you can’t change your thinking.
But are you ready for the silver lining?
YOU CAN change the way you think.
And if you can change the way you think, you can master a new way to be.
