By Dolores Day

“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.” — Rene Descartes

No doubt at some point in your life you have experienced worry, constant negative self-talk, panic, chronic anxiety or possibly even suffered from a panic attack. All of these feelings are very suppressive and extremely powerful emotions that take hold on our life and create suffering. They cannot only ruin a day they can take the reins of our lives and actually paralyze us completely. Our mind is the solution we can use to prevent these experiences.

Many of us may not realize that about 95% of the same thoughts we thought yesterday we find ourselves thinking about habitually again this very day. Yep, our repetitive subconscious mind will repeat the same thoughts based on our own personal beliefs about all things in life.

For some, this is a great thing and has served them well. For others there is a need to dive deep and do personal mental work so they can take back control of their ship and become the masters of their fate, no longer playing prisoner to anxiety, worry, and constant fears. The possibility to live a peace-filled and joyful life is not reserved for the positive Pollyannas that seemed to be born this way. No, each carrying his own personal responsibility must first recognize that it can belong to him as well if he is willing to work for it and re-train his subconscious mind by way of consciously creating new neuro-pathways and committing himself to a new a way of thinking.

We must think of our thoughts as seeds. What we continue to plant in our mind with grow and eventually harvest a material thing, experience or circumstances in our life. Whether we plant seeds of worry and fear or seeds of hope and joy in our mind, our life will bear the fruit of these dominant repeating thoughts eventually. My self-reflective question that I ask a lot is, “What do you say when you talk to yourself?” If we are so inclined to begin to ask ourselves internally this question and have the awareness to get the running dialogue script, we would discover that much of our suffering is self-inflicted in our mind. What we say to ourselves is the most important thing we can begin to observe and then change.

When we begin to pay attention to our thoughts, we must be aware of what we are saying about our life. These are the beliefs that we hold. Do you believe you have the right to be happy? Do you trust yourself to make good decisions? Do you believe that you are doomed to genetic illnesses or that money is evil?

Do you believe there is a loving God that will support you? Your beliefs create your habitual thoughts, and your thoughts create your emotions. So, if you want to feel good, think good positive happy thoughts. If you want to feel bad, you will most likely want to think self-defeating, negative, fear filled thoughts.

Soren Kierkegaard said, “Our lives always express the result of our most dominant thoughts.” How do we create good positive life-sustaining thoughts that create positive outcomes? We do this by consciously participating in mind work. Visualizing is just one potent strategy. Most successful people in the world practice this method daily by using the power of their mind to go inward and imagine their ideal life, happy and free. What kind of thoughts do they think? Simply the ones that excite them the most and feel most pleasurable. They literally picture themselves on the television screen of their mind experiencing life to its fullest by thinking mostly about the things that they love.

Another way to change our dominant thoughts is by creating new mantras (beliefs) about our lives and using them daily to affirm what we would like to hold as true. Such as, “Things are always working out for me.” Or, “Life is abundant and supports me in everything I do.” These very simple but new beliefs will have a drastic impact on one’s emotions and therefore their experiences when cultivated repetitiously in one’s life.

I know that some may have a hard time with the idea that our thoughts create our reality, but give it a few weeks in your life. Observe your judgments of life, your self-talk and your words that you speak freely. By doing so you will become more aware of the words that are manipulating your own emotions and most often creating suffering. If we wish to master our own mind and live our best life, we must be willing to put in the work and intentionally begin to shift our thoughts.

If you would like to learn more strategies to consciously rewire your subconscious mind, do not hesitate to reach out to me for help.

(De Day is an empowerment life coach. Connect more on Instagram @de.day.love or at de-day.com.)