Do you resist change?
Years ago I cut out a daily quote from the front page of a daily newspaper. The clipping has long disappeared into the maze of my life’s journey, but the message remains.
“Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others. ” Jacob M. Braude
Changing myself and my thinking has definitely been one of the hardest tasks in my life! It’s 2 steps forward and 1 back. When I’m in the flow, it can be 200 or 2000 steps forward, then suddenly out of nowhere a single negative experience can morph into a landslide and I slip into the abyss of old, negative self-talk that grinds me to a halt. If I stay there long enough I can lose sight of all I’ve been working towards and it takes a jolt to bring me back to my focus.
I recently reconnected with an old acquaintance – a woman I had briefly known over 30 years ago. We have been on very different paths, yet she came back into my life bearing a way of thinking that I’ve worked very hard to attain. Sitting at my kitchen table chatting – as if we had seen each other yesterday – she talked about how she is handling the recent death of the love of her life, a man she had just met when we first met all those years ago.
As I listened, I was reminded of so many thinking-tools I’ve learned, practised, and acquired, that in the flurry of activity resulting from my intensive use of them, I’d almost stopped using!
Using those same tools, I’d overcome some of my biggest fears – and yet, as I find myself presented with a certain opportunity – an opportunity offered by that same old acquaintance whose very re-emergence into my life reminds me of how far I’ve come and how much I’ve done – I keep slamming into my thinking. Yes, I’m the same woman who wrote this poem: Slip Through to the Next Dimension, about using our minds to project ourselves into another universe. Yet still, my thinking has me stuck at my current launch pad.
I have to blast myself into orbit using all the tools of positive thinking, and that most important tool of profound gratitude, to fuel the rocket shipof my mind. Because my mind is a rocket ship, capable of going exactly where I want it to go.
Have you got some fuel to add to the mix? What tools do you use to keep your thinking flowing in the zone?
Related articles
- Failure Is The Negative Space Around Success (lorensworld.com)
- Choosing Positive Thinking (lorensworld.com)
- 12 Proven Ways Positive Thinking Helps Your Career (onlinecollege.org)
- Power of Positive thinking and How to use it. (lifeiwanttolive.wordpress.com)
- Five Ways to Handle a Setback with Positive Thinking (passingthru.com)
- Day 60: Fear of Not Thinking: From Thinking to Direct Seeing (sandysjourneytolife.wordpress.com)
- Thinking Mindset vs Doing Mindset from 99U (cinnamonpink.typepad.com)
- Am I Thinking? Considering…. (onequalitynote.wordpress.com)
- Why Learn Positive Thinking? (denvercounselingblog.wordpress.com)
Alison Amazed 
I agree; when we think in a good way, we ninety-nine percent of the time, get a positive result:)
Yes indeedy! 🙂 Lots of great food covered on your blog 🙂
I strive for positive thinking but it can be a struggle. I’ve resisted certain change and other change I have welcomed. One thing that really changed me in big ways was raising kids. Seeing them where I once was puts a lot into perspective.
This is the truth, Arlee! Not having had kids, I can’t comment -though a 21 year old recently shared my place for a short time and she was an eye-opener!
One of the pieces of thinking that has stayed with me was from a Creative Thinking course as part of my MBA. It was about different ways of problem solving – accept the situation, change the situation, change yourself, or leave the situation.
There is always a different way of perceiving whatever situation we are in. I’m recognizing – since meeting with this old friend – that my thinking about certain things is really in a rut. Just as I leapt off a cliff when I left Canada for Europe, and just as I leapt off a cliff the first time I walked on stage to sing in a jam session, I think it’s time to jump off another cliff and cast aside my judgements about certain ways of doing things – and try what she’s suggesting. Ooooo…scary to let go of that aspect of my way of thinking!