Getting Started

Before you can do anything to start yourself into new growth and improvement, you need to take a leap of faith.

That means learning to discard many of the things that you have been taught by observing everything that goes on around you and preparing to learn new things and take on board new ideas that are necessary before you can make the shift that you need to make.

Why do you need to lose a lot of the "baggage" with which you have been going through life with? Because it has not helped you to improve so far, has it?

Lifelong Habits

Without even realizing it, you have lived your life up until this point being directed and led by a series of habits that you acquired along the way and these habits are what you've picked up from other people and from your environment. If you are not already successful, in which case you would probably not even be reading this, then you have not learned to create your own success habits.

You have been living in the shadow of unsuccessful habits learned from other unsuccessful people and unsuccessful situations.

These lifelong habits will be hard to break and it will take some measure of mental discipline, make no mistake. They may feel like they are a part of you and in many ways, they are. But break them you must before you can move on to a more productive and successful era in your life. What are these habits?

Your Thoughts

Your thoughts are responsible for where you are right now. It's what you are thinking on a regular basis that determines your emotional state and your emotional state determines whether you are going in the right direction.

This is one of the reasons why it's important to learn how to think the right way. Most people are going in the wrong direction because they are not directing their thoughts in the right way.

So what is the right way to think?

Well, you have probably heard it said many times or read it in magazine articles, but a person with a predominantly positive mindset tends to be more successful in life than a person with a predominantly negative mindset. Being positive is about being forward thinking, happy and eager to do things, while being motivated and upbeat about getting things done.

Its having that feeling that you can do a task that is put before you and then getting on with doing it, with no complaints. Being positive is also about experiencing the right kinds of emotions which are determined by what you are predominantly thinking about.

• A positive way of thinking will tend to cause a person to experience more positive emotions, such as happiness, humor, love, eagerness, joy, benevolence and bliss.
• A negative way of thinking will tend to cause a person to experience more negative emotions, such as hatred, anger, resentment, frustration, stinginess and guilt.

It's what is sometimes referred to as the "glass half full, glass half empty" personality, where a positive person will see the good in everything, whereas the negative person will see fault in everything. The positive person is generally happy in all the things they do, have a kind word to say to everyone they meet and they greet people with a smile.

Negative people like to complain about things, finding only bad things to say about people and tend to greet people with a scowl. They put up a lot of mental resistance to things that get in their way and vent resentful, angry emotions in their direction.

Negative people get angry about lots of things and resent people who they believe have done them wrong in some way. Positive people stay calm in the face of adversity and forgive those that have done them wrong and so hold no resentment.

It's the holding on of the negative emotions of resentment and anger towards other people that causes negative people to suffer more things that they can be resentful of. In other words, they attract the very thing that they hold uppermost in their thoughts.

Positive people attract more things to be happy and thankful for because that's what they hold predominantly in their thoughts. This way you are aturally attracting good into your life by putting out good thoughts.

Making Sense of It All

Is this beginning to make sense to you yet? Can you see something of what has just been explained in you? Try and see how many of the following questions you can answer "Yes" to:

• Are you a predominantly negative person?
• Do you find fault in others and moan and complain about things?
• Do you get angry about things you read in newspapers and see on the TV news?
• Do you seem to attract more than your fair share of frustrating, annoying situations in your life?

You might also ponder over the question of whether your glass is half empty or half full. It might jolt you into a realization that maybe, just maybe you have been the victim of a negative personality and didn't even know it. It happens and it happens a lot. Can you break out of this mold and become more positive?

Of course you can!

You only have to change your predominant way of thinking. That might sound easy for someone else to say and you might think that some people have the ability to change themselves or re-invent themselves but you can't because . . . fill in the blank. Uh oh, you're still doing it. Thinking negatively. Stop it right now and change your mind.

Becoming Positive

It's worth remembering that we are all working with an infinite intelligence that responds to the state of our thoughts. Think to yourself, "I can change and become more positive. I can think positive thoughts. I can stop finding fault with people or things and start seeing the good in everything."

Say that to yourself over and over a few times and start doing it every day. You'll soon realize that you can turn your thoughts into positive ones and do it more and more. You don't need to worry about getting rid of the negative thoughts. In fact, you should not dwell on trying to get rid of negative thoughts at all.

Why?

Well the more attention you give to something, the more it will grow in your mind because it is grown out of an attractive force that comes into play. So stop dwelling on the negative things or even on trying to get rid of the negative things.

Instead, dwell on the positive things only. Dwell on happy thoughts, like the times that have run through your life that made you laugh and that you found really enjoyable. The more attention you give to the positive, the more the negative will simply fall away through lack of attention. If that concept doesn't quite make a lot of sense to you right now, it will in time. Think of this:

If you go into a dark room, how do you get rid of the dark? Do you fight and stumble around trying to wave the dark away? No. You turn on the light!

Turn on your light and banish the darkness by giving your full attention to the light, happy, enjoyable things in your life and by default, all the negative things will drop away all by themselves, just like turning on the light floods the room with light and the darkness disappears!