Bad Behavior and Positive Affirmations

[Dannyboy1]

I realize everyone makes fun of people who do affirmations, but I'll tell you something, they work. Every day we read about how kidnappers brainwash their captives or cults brainwash their flock. It obviously works. So, why not brainwash yourself into creating ways of thinking that make your life better? Some people might say, "You're lying to yourself." Guess what? Whether something is true or not doesn't matter. The only way you're going to make good things happen, is if you truly believe it's true already. I guarantee if you DON'T believe it's true, it DEFINATELY won't happen. Besides, you're not lying to yourself if you're the one doing the lying. You may be lying to your emotions, but your emotions are not you. If you let your emotions control you, you're in trouble. Emotions fluctuate with diet, sleep, breathing, movement... in fact, all six senses have an effect on your emotions before your conscious mind even begins to think about it. When you brainwash yourself, you're doing it to yourself to create the person you want to be. It's YOUR choice. You reprogram your phone, your DVD player, your computer... why not yourself? I can tell you from my recent experience.I bought a positive attitude CD and started playing it every day, on my way to work, while I was working, lunchtime, etc. and after a couple of weeks my attitude was remarkably better. I started realizing all of the negative thoughts that were popping into my head and how useless they were. In fact, they were so detrimental, they carried into every interaction I had during my day. I couldn't believe how many negative thoughts there actually were. I thought I was a pretty positive person, but there was a huge river of completely unfounded judgments and expectations flowing beneath the surface just out of my conscious radar. It was like an evil Jiminy Cricket whispering in my ear all the time. "This jerk is standing too close to me!" He probably was a perfectly nice person. "This stupid woman shoved me!" Who cares? She probably is upset about her life and doesn't know how to handle her emotions. Do I really want to even waste one second of my life angry at a total stranger? "I am so stupid." No I'm not. I made a mistake, that's all. "Stupid train is taking forever." Oh, that should make it come faster. So what if I'm a little late. People won't even notice and, if they do, so what? It happens to everyone. Believe it or not, everyone is going through all the same stuff. It's just that successful happy people process things better. The only way to change your life is to change your way of processing what is happening right in front of you, right now. Help yourself. Constantly pound positive thoughts into your head with positive affirmation CD's until you really start thinking that way. And then, keep doing it. It can only help. Believe it or not, if you do it consistently, it only takes 30 days to see an incredible difference in your thinking. It takes 30 days to build a habit. What's easier than listening to a CD? Even if you don't do it consciously, it's bound to affect you if it's around you all the time. Garbage in, garbage out. The reverse is true as well. Just keep something with you all the time that you can just press play and force feed it into your head. If you can't consciously listen at first, keep it on in the background. I guarantee that eventually, you will be able to really focus on it in a couple of weeks. Be a pit-bull about consistently playing these CD's! Say, "I am going to change! I am going to think smarter!" If you do, it will work.

The main resistance I've found myself to have about this whole thing is, I didn't realize until I really demanded an answer from myself as to why I haven't changed in the past. The main reason the self help stuff I've listened to in the past hasn't had the effect I'd hoped, was because of this. I wanted my way of thinking to be COMPLETELY AUTOMATIC. Think about that for a second. I wanted to just wander around and automatically be positive and do the most logical things that would create the best results. That's kind of impossible, isn't it? I mean, even on automatic pilot, a plane is constantly going the wrong direction. The reason it gets to it's destination is because it MONITORS itself constantly and changes it's course back to where it wants to go. I wanted that to be who I am, but I didn't want to ever have to consciously have to think about it. I would say to myself, "I don't want to walk around thinking about every little thing I'm doing and how it's going to affect me or other people. I just want things to happen the right way automatically. I don't want to have to constantly monitor myself! It's too much work!" However, I finally faced up to the fact that I had a temper that was apparent enough that all my friends thought of it as one of my qualities. An actual QUALITY. Then, I realized I was actually proud of it! In my mind, I imagined my friends were thinking, "He really stands up for himself." I was happy that my friends didn't want to make me mad because they knew if I got to that point, they couldn't win, so they gave in. Is that really how I wanted to get my way? No! People resent that. Also, once I started working 9 to 5 I had a couple of confrontations that, even though I thought I was in the right, it was just not worth the pain I was causing myself. So, I decided to start seeing if I could go through rush hour every day without reacting no matter how hard I was shoved or verbally attacked. At first, it was impossible. I had these "triggers" that I've had my whole life and by the time I realized I had lost control, I was in the middle of an ugly battle with another person who was also totally out of control. In fact, I think it actually got worse at first because I was trying to hold my emotions inside until they just burst. Then, I read an article about anger that suggested that one should prepare oneself ahead of time for triggers to happen and plan a way to avoid the rush of emotion that usually ensued. So, I thought of every stupid thing people had done to piss me off on the someway and said to myself, "Okay, someone is going to bump me and not apologize, this is going to happen. When it happens, I am going to APOLOGIZE FIRST, not expect an answer, and move far away from the person." I began to monitor myself from the time I stepped out of the apartment to the time I reached my office. Low and behold, it worked! Not only did I avoid several confrontations, I had no negative thoughts about it because I was so proud of myself for not letting it effect me! Imagine that. I was happy someone pushed me and I took it with a smile!

I thought to myself, "Why did I resist so hard staying aware in the moment?" I realized, I thought that monitoring myself was too much work. "I don't want to think about what I'm doing every second!" What I failed to see was that MONITORING myself was not "thinking" at all. MONITOR YOURSELF... I've made these two words more than just words. I've made them a catch phrase that I use to zap myself into the moment. It's the single most important phrase I need in order for anything I learn to be transformed into action, into an ingrained behavior. It's just being aware and anticipating in the moment. For any change to happen in your way of thinking, you have to be prepared to constantly monitor yourself. Believe me, I've come to realize it's almost no work at all. In fact, it gives you a sense of empowerment because you are in control of yourself. Still not convinced? All you have to do is weigh the infinitesimal amount of work it takes to monitor yourself to the amount of work and pain and stress it takes for you to handle all of the problems and arguments and disputes you fall into if you DON'T monitor yourself. Personally, I'd rather monitor myself than have to carry the burden of all of the problems my old behavior seems to produce.

So, MONITOR YOURSELF. Be in the moment every second. Prepare for the pitfalls. Listen to music and affirmations to change to a better way of thinking, and you should be well on your way to making real improvements in your life.

Thanks for reading,

Danny