Is life not being kind to you? Why you’re not doing yourself any favors with this mindset – and how your thought patterns influence your life.
What makes us happy? A strong partnership or a fulfilling family life? A big house, a prestigious job? Lots of travel? What contributes to our personal feeling of life satisfaction is very individual. But what many of us underestimate is that the path to get there is often similar – even if the goal is completely different. And this is exactly where many people often make a mistake in their thinking.
They assume that what makes us happy or dissatisfied depends only on external circumstances. That we encounter things in life without our intervention, both beautiful and unpleasant, to which we can only react. And yes, that may be the case for certain things. After all, we cannot always influence whether we or someone close to us gets sick or whether our employer cuts jobs and we therefore lose our job.
Our thoughts write our truth
But still, author David Ahearn explains on “Your Tango,” we have much more control over our fate than we think – with our thoughts. And underestimating or even wasting this opportunity is one of the biggest mistakes we can make.
“Whatever is happening in your life is the result of your repeated thought patterns,” says the American motivational speaker. This may sound a bit simplistic – see the examples above: illness, job loss and so on. But the key here also lies in dealing with such difficult situations. Even if it may seem impossible at first when we suffer a stroke of fate, according to Ahearn, we can also use such moments to get closer to the life we want.
Because how we think about what happens to us greatly influences how we experience it. An example: You break your leg and now can’t go on the hiking vacation you’ve been looking forward to all year long. You might think something like: “The universe is conspiring against me, how unfair! Something like this always happens to me, other people have it so much better than me.” If we wallow in such a thought spiral of self-pity long enough, then we internalize exactly this mindset.
What does our brain need?
And this is not about esoteric mumbo jumbo, but simply about how our brain works. The more often we have a thought, the more our brain internalizes it as truth. And at some point such thought patterns become so firmly anchored in us that we can no longer help but see and experience everything negatively.
Instead, you could try not to immediately evaluate the stupid situation you find yourself in, but rather to accept it neutrally and simply accept it. Maybe you can even get something positive out of it: Maybe instead of the hiking trip you can go on a little wellness vacation or that meditation retreat that you’ve been wanting to do for a long time but somehow didn’t dare to book. If we manage to train our brain not to immediately fall into negative thought patterns, but rather to remain neutral first and then see what opportunities arise, we have already gained a lot.
And of course this isn’t easy in all situations, a broken leg and a canceled vacation are not comparable to the loss of a loved one. But it’s not about immediately pushing away every negative thought and looking at everything in a convulsively and toxically positive way. But the more we internalize that we can influence our lives with our thoughts, the easier things will become for us.
An important clue
That all sounds well and good, but is it just not feasible for you? Do you feel like you can’t look at situations positively – no matter how hard you try to break your negative thought patterns? It’s best to talk to a doctor or therapist about it. There may be a mental illness behind it. Because as easy as it sounds to change your own thoughts and thus possibly your entire life, for some people this is not possible in every situation. And additional pressure to “always think positively” can often only drive us further into the negative spiral.
Source used: yourtango.com, mindbodygreen.com