CH-CH-CH Changes

Thoughts are powerful.

Thoughts begin the creation process. Thoughts can stop us in our tracks. Thoughts can keep us up at night. Thoughts can change our lives.

I grew up hearing the phrase, "change your mind, change your life." Like so many things in life, I don't think I truly understood its meaning until I was an adult.

Looking back over the course of my life (which is still young, thoukyouverymuch), I can see the turning points where my beliefs led me in a certain direction. There were beliefs about what I was supposed to do and about who I was. As time has gone on, I have realized that these thoughts didn't have to be.

Don't get me wrong, I don't regret that I allowed these thoughts to move me. I see that I had to have those experiences in order to be able to become the person I am now. What I have come to understand is that the journey I took was but one of many paths to the same destination. Had I changed my beliefs back then, I would still have become who I am now, it just would have been different landscape along the way and maybe not so much pain.

I wrote earlier about consciously changing your emotional reaction to situations. Oddly, I find the process of changing my thoughts easier than changing my emotions. I guess, because emotions are such an immediate response they can be hard to catch, where as thoughts are slower and easier to trap and remove.

The first step in this process is to evaluate your beliefs. Are these beliefs yours or someone else's that you have adopted? Do they serve a positive purpose in your life or are the limiting you? If you were to find out that what you believe isn't true how would it change your life? Would that change be for the better?

As with anything, don't try to change everything at once; take small steps. Make the easiest change first, whatever that is for you, and see what happens. Embrace the change and allow yourself to discover all that it holds. Then decide on your next move.

One small change in thought can send a ripple throughout your life.