Becoming your Highest Self: Changing Negative Thought Patterns

It’s not as easy as writing a gratitude list, but writing one doesn’t hurt.

Good god these past couple of years have been fucked up, am I right? 

On the one hand, the world is literally burning and crumbling before our eyes, but on the other hand, a huge shift in human consciousness is occurring. People are starting to wake up. Some people have been able to slow down and realise what’s important to them. But some people haven’t had that luxury. It can be extremely difficult to navigate our own minds when we don’t have time to slow down. 

We create our own worry, stress and anxiety by thinking about the past – which has already happened – it cannot be changed and it no longer exists; or worrying about the future – again, thinking about a scenario that may or may not occur – a scenario which – at this moment – does not exist. 

The only thing that is ever real – is right now. This very second. Take a deep breath in. Look around you. Feel your heart beat. This is it. 

Turn off the News and Put Down the Phone

Humans are blessed and cursed with the capability to think about the past and future. We can plan, anticipate, and relive fond memories. But we can also muster up fear, uncertainty and regret. The media surely doesn’t help – streaming only what they want us to see – what will give them ratings – fear. 

Have you ever noticed how much you talk to yourself in your own head? Labelling and judging everything that happens? “Why is it raining, I hate the rain” Or thinking about the past or the future?— “Ok, so all I have to do is get through today then it’s the weekend” More often than not, these unconscious thoughts can be negative. “You’re too fat” —“You have too many wrinkles” —“You’ll never amount to anything.” 

Why are we so mean to ourselves? Most of us would never say the things we say to ourselves on a regular basis to another person.

It’s especially hard with our noses stuck in our phones scrolling through Instagram, constantly comparing ourselves to everyone else. Doubting who we are, where we are and where we are going. I am sooo guilty of this. I know I need to put the phone away when I start questioning everything I am doing. Comparison is a killer. You will never, ever be happy if you are constantly comparing your journey to someone else’s. 

JUST SHUT UP AND GIVE ME SOME PEACE AND QUIET!

You might not even realise the incessant chatter constantly going on in the back ground. Until you do. And then you just want it to shut the fuck up.

Our brains are made up of neural pathways. Every time you have a thought, you are strengthening that neural pathway, making it more likely for you to repeat that same thought. This is how we get stuck in negative thought patterns. Think of it like a car going down a dirt road. The car is the thought and the grooves in the road are the neural pathways. The car’s tires will make grooves in the road, and as more cars come along, it will be easier for them to drive in the grooves, and with each car, the grooves will get deeper and deeper, until it’s almost impossible to go any other way but in those grooves. 

Every time we have a thought, the neural pathways get stronger and stronger, and we get stuck in habitual thinking, making it increasingly difficult to create new thoughts or new ways of thinking. We are stuck thinking in the past. If you are thinking the same things you did a year, 5, 10 years ago, you will be the same person as you always have been.

This can be detrimental to our well-being, especially if we are always having negative thoughts, or if we want to make a change in our lives. You cannot grow if you are thinking the same way you always have been.

It can be extremely difficult to change if we’ve been thinking the same way our whole lives… But… It can be done. 

Re-Wiring Your Brain

The following steps are what I have done, and continue to do each and every day. Re-wiring your brain doesn’t happen over night.  It takes conscious, continual effort, and discipline, especially to change your negative thought patterns that are linked to deep rooted beliefs. 

1. Become aware of your thoughts, and realise that you are not your thoughts. Meditation is a great tool – read my full article on meditation here.
2. Transmute your old negative thoughts to new ones. Every time you catch yourself with old, familiar, negative thoughts, replace it with a different one you’d like to have. It will be uncomfortable at first and feel unnatural, but the more you do this, the easier it will become. A lot of the time you will be surprised at how many negative things you say to yourself in a day. For example “I’ll never have enough money” “I’ll never be successful” Change to “I have more money than I will ever need, money is constantly flowing to me” and “I am successful.” 
3. The next step is believing your new mantras. As I said, at first you will feel like you are lying to yourself, but as you repeat your new ideas about yourself to yourself, try to feel them and embody them as if they are true. Feel that you are successful, feel that you are wealthy. How would you act? What would you do? What would you say? Simply writing out your gratitudes or positive affirmations isn’t enough, although it doesn’t hurt, and can be a great tool! But you need to believe what you are saying to yourself. The more you repeat this, the easier it will become. Again think of the car making new grooves in the dirt road. The car is going to want to go down the old path – it’s the easy route – but with effort It can start to make a new path. The new path won’t initially be as deep as the original – the original path has been used for years and years – your whole life. But – with a lot of effort, consistency, and discipline, keep pushing the car down the new path, and eventually, it will automatically start to veer away from the old and into the new.
4. If you fall off the wagon, it’ll almost feel like starting from square one. Think of it like an addict. An alcoholic (as far as I know) doesn’t stop being an alcoholic. They can go 5 years without a drink, and then one day, they have a moment of weakness and say ok, maybe just one. A bottle of vodka later and they are back to where they started 5 years ago. It’s the same with re-wiring our brains. We are going to be tempted to revert back to our old thinking patterns because it is easier. It’s comfortable. And we love the hit of cortisol we get when become stressed. It’s literally a form of addiction. So you must constantly monitor your thoughts. Yes it sounds like a lot of work, because it is. But the pay off is better than you could imagine. Your life will be transformed, because the way you look at life will be transformed. You will begin to see opportunities that you you never knew existed, you will attract more love and abundance, and eventually you won’t ever want to go back to your old ways. 
5. It is a never-ending journey. You will never be finished learning and growing, but it will get easier, and eventually you might even start to enjoy the process. For me, I think of it like a game. It’s easier when everything around you is going right, but when things are going wrong, that’s where the real challenge lies. But that’s where you get the most reward, because when you can put a different spin on a negative situation, the situation transforms in front of you, and with it, you become transformed. 

This practice isn’t something that you one day say – ‘oh, I did it, I’m here now.’ It is ongoing. It changes and grows as you change and grow, and it is beautiful. Enjoy it. Remember, the first step is simply becoming aware. Try not to be hard on yourself – everything you’re going through is completely normal, it is all a part of the process. Feelings of frustration may arise as you notice how often your mind goes off on a tangent and how much useless crap it thinks about – that’s ok. Allow yourself to be frustrated. And then let it pass. 

And remember. You are amazing. You are perfect just as you are.

Here are books I have read that have changed my life and helped me understand this process on a deeper level:

“The Power of Now” – Eckhart Tolle

“Becoming Supernatural” – Dr. Joe Dispenza

“Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” – Dr. Joe Dispenza… All of his books are amazing and would highly recommend.

If you have any questions or comments or think this makes absolutely no sense please get in touch, I’d love to hear from you.

~ Love & laughter ~