Mindset matters. Character counts. Our character comes from our repetitious thoughts, beliefs, and mindset. Our level of integrity we vibrate at consistently comes from consistently doing hard things, and always remembering to do what we said we would. When we are true to our words, and prove it through our consistent actions, we build credibility with ourselves and others. Our self-esteem expands, and our confidence grows. We become what we think about.
In most cases, depression and sadness is a result of personal choices. These states are the chemical and hormonal residual effects of consistent, habitual patterns in our thinking resulting in feelings that match that level of thinking. Happiness works the exact same way. Our focus determines our reality. WE create our chemical and hormonal reality and our states of feeling through thought alone! Most people don’t like to hear this. I know I didn’t when this idea was first introduced to me. It pissed me off. It pointed out to me the seemingly obvious, that I immediately realized I should have already thought about all by myself, but didn’t, and I felt stupid because of it. I resented the person who brought it to my attention, calling me out and telling me I needed to accept personal responsibility for the fact that I literally created my life to be what it was. I’m incredibly grateful for people that do such things for me now, and consider them my closest allies.
Our sadness and depression is a part of the story that we choose to keep re-telling. It is a part of our story that we choose to identify ourselves by, think about every day, and keep telling ourselves and others. Most people suffering from depression and sadness don’t like to hear this, either. In my darkest times, my dad used to tell me, “You will be happy when you decide to be happy.” It made me so damn angry to hear this. I guess it angered me because it made it sound so easy. It wasn’t easy! It was quite a long, drawn out, difficult process to change my habitual thoughts, beliefs, and actions, and to wait for my outside world to catch up to the inner environment I had to work so hard to create. An interesting thing happened, however, after all that consistency and hard work. It became progressing easier, and then it became my new way of being.
Improving the quality of my life and escaping the clutches of that deep, dark depression, and the daily feeling of extreme sadness, was not easy, at first. It required me to change my mindset, beliefs, perspectives, and habits. I had to change the way I looked at and interacted with EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. That takes time. It takes consistency. It takes patience and a LOT of practice. It’s sometimes like planting seeds, and wanting to eat the fruit off of the tree immediately, not having the patience to wait for the seed to break apart, take root, and begin to grow, eventually producing fruit.
In a world where so many things take no time at all to acquire, and where differed gratification is no longer practiced, with distractions everywhere, a long, drawn out, difficult process is the last thing we want to think about or be a part of. The quality of our lives depends on it, however. The quality of our lives literally depends upon what we think about. Our thoughts are the seeds.
When I first heard the interview with Dr. Joe Dispenza, on the YouTube show called Impact Theory, I began to research this man’s story and his work. I watched many other interviews which he was featured in. I had many moments of clarity, and began to realize the power that each and every one of our repetitious, consistently practiced, habitual thoughts really do have on our actual physical reality.
Each day we wake up, we have the opportunity to re-wire our brains for success! Expressing gratitude is, in my opinion, the greatest and most effective way to do this.
At a dark time in my life, when suicide was a real solution in my mind, my dad gave me a book called, “The Secret”. The section on gratitude literally saved my life. I have since made it a part of my daily routine. This was extremely difficult for me at first. Now, as soon as I wake up, I hop in the shower, and as soon as that water hits me, I think of all the things I am grateful for. The list is different every day. It is as long or short as I want to make it. But a gratitude list is the most important part of my day. It took months to habituate this practice and make it a part of a consistent, daily routine.
Gratitude attracts more to be grateful for into our lives. Gratitude, when practiced consistently and habitually, will literally re-wire anyone’s brain to have a more optimistic, positive mind.
Gratitude can be a filter through which we are all things more beautifully. Gratitude is a magnet for miracles.
We will ALWAYS recognize and see more of what we focus on in our lives, and when all we focus on is what is going RIGHT in our lives, we are no longer focusing on what is going wrong. WHAT WE FOCUS ON, WE FEED. WHAT WE GIVE OUR ATTENTION TO, WE ENERGIZE.
Gratitude, practiced DAILY for years, as part of a daily routine, will literally empower us to live a much more beautiful existence. Practicing gratitude reprograms our minds to focus more on seeing and recognizing the positivity, abundance, joy, and the good that is already in our lives which we usually do not recognize or acknowledge.
A daily gratitude practice alters the gene expression within each cell of our bodies, allowing us to heal more quickly, fortifying our immune system, and improving the chemicals and hormones that are consistently coursing through our veins and reaching every part of our bodies, constantly.
In addition, the energy we put out into the Universe returns back to us. That which we focus on tends to manifest itself more prevalently in our lives. That which we focus on and think about all day long is literally attracted back to us, exponentially, allowing us to more effectively and efficiently project a progressively more beautiful personal reality into existence.
The more often we vibrate with gratitude, the more we will attract into our lives which is at that same vibrational frequency.
An optimistic, positive, and grateful mind, along with daily reminders and perspective-shifts, has served me well. It has helped me re-wire my brain to think about things differently than I used to. I used to be a negative-minded, pessimistic, gloom and doom, pity-party, miserable, excuse of a human being. I wasted so many years being bitter, sad, and depressed, hopeless, angry, and addicted to my misery. I was filled with expectations, which are simply premeditated resentments and was a way to quickly alienate myself from others through judgments, criticism, and constant expressions of disappointment. I have those years to make up for, and the only way I will be able to make up for that time is by sharing what I have learned with others, hopefully empowering them to save years of the bitterness, sadness, depression, hopelessness, anger, and addictions that I spent so much time on.
A painful moment that causes us pain only happens once, but when we choose to re-live that painful moment in our lives, suffering ensues, and the suffering will continue for as long as we choose to think of that one painful moment in time. When we stop focusing on that one thing that went wrong and start focusing on all the MANY thing going right, miracles begin to happen in our lives.
Practicing gratitude has helped me to seek out different things than I used to. Practicing gratitude has helped me to focus on different things than I used to. Practicing gratitude altered my mindset and has helped me to create a completely different inner environment-and eventually an outer reality to match it, which is much more enjoyable to live in than the dark, sad, pitiful existence I used to exist within. Now, I wake up each morning eager to get the day started, rather than wanting to die so that my self-perpetuated suffering will end.
Gratitude has been my greatest tool for positive change.
Consistency creates a conversion and a convergence of circumstances. Consistently practicing gratitude results in more to be grateful for.
WE are the authors and creators of our own, personal reality. WE choose what to focus on consistently.
I found this to be especially true after intentionally setting aside a certain time each day to practice gratitude. After years of consistent practice, life has become magical, especially when compared to the life I was living years ago. The seed was planted, and now the fruit is finally ready to eat.
Gratitude puts things in perspective.
We can choose to look around and see how much better we really do have it, in so many ways, than other people out there. Someone out there will always be experiencing a worse , personally-created reality than we are.
Someone out there is at this very moment wishing and praying for the life you are currently living, no matter how ugly, dark, bad, undesirable, and full of lack, you may think it is.
Today’s challenge for myself: Today I will take the time to write a list of every single thing I can think of to be grateful for. I will decide what it will take for me to make gratitude a part of my daily routine, if I haven’t already.
It has been taught that we are the compilation of the 5 people we spend the most time around and the books we read. I have found this to be true in my life. I have become VERY intentional about the people around me and the content I allow into my mind.
Mo Gawdat wrote a book called, SOLVE FOR HAPPINESS. I highly recommend plugging this man’s name into YouTube and listening to every bit of content created that he has been involved in.
goodinthehead is also on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. The goodinthehead Podcast can be found on YouTube. Follow me there, as well, for daily messages, inspiration, motivation, and reminders. Please pay it forward, and share this, and ANY message, which may empower someone you love or may care about. It is through adding value to others by sharing and spreading wisdom, that we become more valuable as individuals, and collectively, as a whole, we all become wiser.
Remember: Mindset matters. Character counts. That which we choose to consistently focus on is what EXPANDS in our lives. WE CREATE our personal realities.
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