Thoughts

Mindfulness is the practice of focusing your attention on the here and now – the present moment. (It’s external) Whereas mindful thinking is the practice of focusing your attention on your thoughts (it’s internal), so that when you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts, you can then focus your attention on a positive and pleasant thought instead. If you catch yourself thinking positive thoughts, then there is no reason to change the focus of your thinking. Continue thinking your pleasant thoughts. Repetition of mindful thinking programs your mind (see Understanding Neuroplasticity) to have a positive mindset and reduces thinking negative thoughts that cause stress, anxiety and hostility.

THIS IS THE RESPONSE FROM GOOGLE BARD

Yes, being aware of one’s thoughts is a key to being happy and successful. Our thoughts have a powerful impact on our emotions, behaviors, and ultimately our lives. When we are aware of our thoughts, we can choose to focus on the positive and let go of the negative. We can also choose to challenge our negative thoughts and beliefs, which can lead to greater happiness and success.

Here are some of the benefits of being aware of one’s thoughts:

• It can help you to identify negative thought patterns that are contributing to your unhappiness or lack of success.
• It can help you to challenge those negative thought patterns and replace them with more positive ones.
• It can help you to become more mindful of your thoughts and emotions, which can lead to greater self-control and emotional resilience.
• It can help you to make better decisions and choices in your life.
• It can help you to live a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

If you are interested in learning more about how to be more aware of your thoughts, there are many resources available online and in libraries. You can also talk to a therapist or counselor who can help you to develop this skill.

Neuroscientist tell us that our sub-conscious mind controls 95% of our thoughts during the day. They also say that we have predominately the same thought patterns every day, day after day. So, be that as it may, if our sub-conscious mind controls 95% of our thoughts, what controls our sub-conscious mind? Our conscious mind programs our sub-conscious mind through repetition and/or by sending emotional stimulation to our sub-conscious mind. Our sub-conscious mind is like a recorder of everything that we focus on with our conscious mind. However, ‘feelings’, our emotions, are an ‘emphasis kicker’ to the intensity of the programming of thoughts in our sub-conscious mind (as in PTSD). If you have the thought that ‘this hotdog is as good as the last 300”, mediocre feeling, your sub-conscious mind records it as a mediocre thought, nothing special. However, if you have the thought that “this hotdog is the most delicious hotdog that I have ever eaten”, excited feelings, your sub-conscious mind records it with a heightened emphasis charge, based on your emotional feelings. And we know from ‘Understanding Neuroplasticity’ that repetition creates a controlling habit. So the secret to success is to use your conscious mind to program your sub-conscious mind with the ‘success result’ that you want to attain. The secret is to manage your thoughts so that you FEEL the emotion that goes with having obtained the success result. Think as though the ‘success result’ has been accomplished and you ARE that person. Wallow in thoughts about how wonderful it feels to be the successful person who achieved the ‘success result’. The more details and the stronger the emotions, the stronger the programming of your sub-conscious mind. These thoughts, with heightened emotional emphasis, will be programmed into your sub-conscious mind. And by deliberately living in this ‘mindset’ frequently, the repetition will make this thought pattern a dominate habit, such that you will evolve into the person of your dreams. By vividly and repeatedly imagining your desired result, you will impress it upon your sub-conscious mind, which acts as the blueprint to bringing it into your life. You will attain your ‘success result’ because your sub-conscious mind will work on the details to attain the desired ‘success result’. You have successfully ‘programmed’ your sub-conscious mind to send you thoughts 95% of the time, that will add to the ‘success result’. It’s like what UConn’s Women’s Basketball Coach Geno said, “you’re trying to create a pattern, and you have to start doings things a certain way. And the more you do those things that certain way, then it becomes who you are.”

You may have read elsewhere that I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) and when that coupled with my negativity bias, my life spiraled downward. Once I learned to observe my negative thoughts, I was able to turn my life around by using ‘positive thought training’. Once I got the ball rolling, my OCPD took over and now I obsess on positive thoughts. I learned from personal experience that if you operate with a negative mindset, you are guiding yourself to failure. You are not operating at your best. However, by utilizing ‘positive thought training, you can guide yourself to success simply by allowing yourself to positively obsess on whatever you enjoy. Commercialize it. By becoming an expert in your field, others will seek you out if they want ‘that-product’. The greatest cause of a business failure is when that owner gets tired of the stress and frustration and decides to walk away, ‘I don’t need this anymore.’ However, with a positive mindset you look at your issues as puzzles that you want to figure it out, so you ‘work on it’. Day by day, each small success leads to your overall success. So, by obsessing on what you’re ‘working-on’ will lead to your success.

Our body is made-up of muscles, and our mind is made-up of neuro-pathways. Both get stronger when we use them, and they both get weaker when we don’t use them. Athletes practice repeating the same physical activity to train a dominate physical behavior pattern. We can practice thinking positive thoughts to train our mind to have a dominate positive thought pattern because repetition strengthens our neural-pathways, and thereby programs the sub-conscious mind. We can make any physical activity or mental thought a dominate habit, if we only keep repeating it. UConn women’s basketball coach, Geno Auriemma, said it best when he said: “ You’re trying to create a pattern, and you have to start doing things a certain way. And the more you do those things a certain way, then it becomes who you are..”

I used to give presentations about positivity through Adult Education programs. Then when Covid hit, all classes were cancelled, so I created the Happiness-Success.com website. I now realize the message is best for young folks eager to ‘find the best way’ in an expanding world. Seniors and middle aged folks are ‘set in their ways’ and are not eager to try something new. So I see this website as a opportunity to help young people develop a positive attitude early as they start out in life. Today, mental health is a serious issue (even for the young) throughout the world and it’s negative thoughts that cause the downward spiral. And the severity depends on your level of obsessive thinking. Rumination is a common example of negative thinking.  

Someone asked me, ’now that you’re so positive, do you ever have negative thoughts?’ I may be very positive and content with my life, but I still have negative thoughts, occasionally. The thing is, I become aware of the negative chatter and turn it off by focusing my attention on something else that’s positive. I’m writing this post as an escape from a negative thought loop that I caught myself in. My theripist told me that I ‘ruminate’. Being the ’observer’ of the negative thought loop, I asked myself if I was tired of the merry-go-round yet? Then I thought about what to do as a distraction, and the thought hit me to share it. Being positive does not stop negative thoughts. But training to observe my thoughts enables me to step back and recognize that I’m in a negative thought loop. Then it’s a matter of deliberately finding something positive to focus on that gets me ’back-on-track’. Writing this paragraph was my distraction.
Now to share a positive benefit of training your thoughts to be positive. Before I trained my thoughts, I would have links in a chain of negative thoughts. One negative thought led to another negative thought, causing me great stress and anxiety. (was this a neural pathway?) After I trained my thoughts to be positive, I still have a chain of thoughts, but they’re positive. I’m about to share one chain because it has the potential to bear positive fruit in the future. I recently started advertising this website on college online newspapers for a cost of $300 to $400 each installment. While pondering the cost of long term advertising, I thought “this could get expensive’. The next thought was “maybe someone will be impressed and want to donate’. Next, ‘but I don’t want a profit with required reporting’. Next, ‘maybe I can suggest ‘pass-it-forward’ where the donor takes on the responsibility to run the advertisement at a school of their choice’. OK. That’s one ‘positive thought’ chain. That’s the positive benefit of training my thoughts to be positive. No stress, just a pleasant thought. (Was that a new neural pathway?)

The website Happiness-Success.com is all about training your thoughts to be positive. However, the down-side is that most people have unconsciously trained their thoughts to be negative by their life experiences. (See Your Brain Is Wired For Negative Thoughts ) And the more their negative thoughts are repeated, the stronger their negative thought training gets, until thinking negatively becomes the unconscious, automatic, dominate thought pattern. ( See Understanding Neuroplasticity) This is a downward spiral. People around the world struggle with negative trained thoughts that cause stress, anxiety, frustration, depression, anger or suicide. And until they learn that there is a better way, they will continue to suffer. Training your thoughts to be positive is the solution. By training your thoughts to be positive, you will reduce the stress, anxiety, frustration and anger, and enable yourself to enjoy a better life that is full of happiness, success and contentment. (see Training Your Thoughts To Be More Positive)

Once you have conditioned your mind to have a dominate, default, positive mindset, you will be able to understand people’s emotional drives better because your emotional awareness will enable you to ‘understand where they are coming from’. In order to condition your mind to be predominately emotionally positive, you must be aware of whether or not your thoughts are positive. With this awareness comes a sensitivity to others emotional states, which gives you the ability to be responsive to their needs. Empathy is a powerful blessing.

A telltale sign of a person’s attitude is their ‘outside world’, because that is a manifestation of their ‘inside world’; are they predominately positive or negative. Do they recognize their ‘outside world’ actions as an expression of ‘who they are’ or do they feel they ‘just want to get it done and move on to the next thing’? Your outward world creations are just part of your evolution. It’s an expression of who you are. It’s you! Having a positive mindset makes your life easier and more enjoyable. For your own selfish reasons, you should want to condition your emotions to be positive, rather than negative, for no better reason than it feels better!! Negativity causes suffering. Positivity causes happiness.

Some of my close family members laugh at me and say I should practice what I preach on my website Happiness-Success.com whenever I get upset or lose my temper. I own that and I understand their point of view. They equate my creating the website and saying I feel blessed implies that I’m hypocritical because I acted in an emotionally negative way. They fail to take in the ‘context’ of my feeling blessed. Imagine you are homeless and unable to fill your dietary needs and then, for whatever reason, your life status changes to where you live in a comfortable home with no mortgage and your refrigerators are full with the food you enjoy. When you compare the before and after, ‘you are blessed’. So to my close family members I say, “Yes, you are correct. I am not always emotionally positive. But when I think of how my negative, emotional life used to be, I cannot help but to feel blessed. Yes, I have challenges, but I recognize them and do my best to deal with them in the most positive way that I can. I practice what I preach when I say, “I just keep trying to be my best. Thank you.”