“There are at least two forms of positive thinking that I consider beneficial. In one you target a goal, develop or adopt a success oriented attitude, and go after your goal until you reach it regardless of what hardships you may encounter along the way. In this case, you know exactly what you want and you go get it because you are positive you can. So you pursue it until you succeed. This is a powerful and positive use of your mind, your feelings and abilities.

The other form is maintaining a sense of gratitude and appreciation for everything you experience. You look for and find the good in everything, the very best there is in your past and present and you accentuate it. You fill your everyday moments with the best thoughts you are able to. You choose  happy thoughts and thoughts of well being and you expect things to work out well for you regardless of what life has to offer. You remain cheery and optimistic. You feel good and you enjoy life. You feel an overall sense of wellbeing  and you wish others the the same. You experience life as glorious. This, too, is a powerful and positive use of your mind, your feelings and abilities.

For me, both forms are important and work hand in hand.

I think of it this way. I want life, overall, to be more pleasant and enjoyable. So whatever I can do to help make it that way I am all for it.

I think of life as a garden and there are many types of gardens. Some grow wild others are well manicured. While I do want it to grow naturally,  I realize that you have to ‘tend to it’ to keep it healthy and looking good. In order to have the garden I prefer I must work at it. I must prepare the soil, plant what I want, provide nutrients and water, weed and remove unwanted materials or pests, protect it and manicure it as necessary. I help make it the garden I desire.

This, too, is how I think about positive thinking.

Life goes on. Life is whatever it is. Life everywhere on the planet occurs largely without me doing anything. Days and nights come and go, events happen, some of which I am directly impacted by and others I am not. Life IS whatever it is.

Regarding my life in the world, I will have to ‘tend to things’ to make it more to my liking.

For me, positive thinking isn’t about magic or wishing for things to  magically appear while I do nothing at all. Positive thinking requires my active participation to get precisely what I want. Magical thinking puts the power outside of me (or us) onto circumstances or others. I then am not in control (we are not in control) something else is. I prefer to ‘be the captain of my soul and the master of my fate’. Don’t you?

I do not mean to say that I control the world or events or others, rather, I choose how I move through the world regardless of what is going on. I am learning to RESPOND to the world as I DECIDE to respond, rather than to REACT to the world as I have been CONDITIONED to.

I think of positive thinking as being able to choose what I want to think, feel and act instead of operating from ‘no choice’ and prior conditioning. It is not about ignoring negativity. It IS about changing what I don’t like or what I don’t want for something better thereby creating the circumstances (and the conditions) I do want to live with.

It is about being in charge of oneself as much as is possible without dictating to others how they should be or what they should do. It is the ability to go after what I want and to achieve that while celebrating the life I already have.

Years ago I never thought this was possible. I thought we had to live with and accept the cards we were dealt.

What I discovered radically changed my life. My eyes and heart were opened to new ways of being and doing. A transformation within me took place. As I continue to transform inside of me the amazing thing is that the outside of me transforms as well. I have found that life responds to me, too.

It turns out, it always did. It reacted to me as I reacted to it.

I thought life sucked – so it did. Life sucked – so I thought it did.

One gigantic cycle! The more I thought it sucked the more it did suck. The more it sucked the more I agreed that it did. On and on it went.

Then of course, I would wonder, when waxing philosophical on occasion, which came first, life sucking or me thinking it did? Which influenced which?

When I realized we influenced each other was when I decided to do something about it. I decided to act as if I influenced all of life (as an experiment) I would pretend, or I would assume that I had choices I previously never thought I did. I would assume I could influence the world and attract goodness by changing my attitude. I didn’t really believe it possible but I was going to experiment.

You have to open a window, however small, to possibility, in order to begin to try something different. Even though I didn’t fully ‘buy it’ I had to create a space whereby it might be possible. I had to suspend my disbelief as best I could in order to entertain the thought of being different. This is not necessarily easy to do, but I found I could do it just enough.

I decided too immerse myself in a positive world of thoughts regardless of whether any of it was true or whether anything would change of not. If nothing changed I probably wouldn’t be any worse off for attempting it and if it did change for the better then that would be wonderful.

I decided to read positive inspirational material each day, morning and night, for no less than thirty days. I would begin and end each day with at least a page. I actually ended up reading more but I started small with something manageable.

I decided to keep in mind, through each day, this statement to guide me: ‘We become what we think about most of the time’.

I decided I would fill MOST of my time with positive thoughts and materials.

I read and I thought about what I read.  I attempted to put into practice what I was learning. I filled my mind. I filled my day, as much as I could, with good thoughts and good feelings. I listened to inspirational audio while driving. I used every moment I could to focus on the positive and what I wanted.

Then it occurred  to me, ‘If we become what we think about,’ then I am and I have in my life that which I ALREADY thought about. I am a product of my past way of thinking!!! My present is a result of all I thought or DIDN’T think previously. If I enjoyed it or if I didn’t like it I was responsible for it.

Whew, that was big for me!

Do you get that? If ‘we become what we think about’ I am (WE ARE) already what I (we) have been thinking about previously. My now, my very present circumstances, this moment, is because of my past thoughts and actions. My thinking brought me to where I am.

I am where I am because of what I thought and did. It is ALL a result of my thoughts and actions.

Another alternative is that I somehow haphazardly ended up here because of what I didn’t think or do. Regardless of which it might be, I realized that it was MY thinking, it was ME, who got me to this moment. I was responsible, in every way, for my present moment.

WOW!!! That blew me away.

I got it! I REALLY needed to change my thinking. I had to change what I focused on. There were many things about my life I did not like and certainly wouldn’t choose for myself (if I knew I was doing the choosing).

I decided to accept (at least for the purpose of the experiment) that I was ALREADY responsible for creating my life. I accepted that I AM the creator. It was not a matter of whether I was or was not creating my life. I would just accept it! Even then I was not completely sold but it seemed to make a lot of sense.

If I was the creator and I brought all this about, and I did it without realizing it, maybe I should take deliberate charge of creating what I really DO want.

I no longer had to create what I didn’t want. I no longer had to go on allowing or accepting whatever I was getting I could determine in advance what I was going to get.

Since there was a lot about my life I didn’t like I took responsibility that I was really good at creating or attracting what I DID NOT WANT. WOW, that hit me!!!

I was incredible at getting what I did not want. I was creating it all. I determined all the outcomes. Again, I remind the reader, that I did not know whether this was actually the case or not but I decided to act as if it were. Part of me still didn’t believe it, and another part wanted to stay away from mystical abundance mumbo jumbo.

The only thing I found that I COULD CHANGE was the direction of my attention.  I could not stop being a creator or attractor but I could more consciously decide to run and manage the creation process. I decided to focus my attention on creating what I wanted. This was a cataclysmic shake up for me.

I was responsible for the results I had been getting all along I just never thought about it that way. I put it on others, on circumstances on bad luck, on anything and everything OTHER than on me.

I embraced the notion that I TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY for my future results?  What if I determined what I would get instead of it letting it being haphazard could that change things?

Change things it did!! IT changed everything the moment I recognized I was responsible and was in charge of the outcomes. EVEN if it is not true, by adopting this mind set, miracles began to occur.

I daily read and filled my mind with positive thoughts. I created some positive AFFIRMATIONS. I thought of these through out the day. Later, I discovered the awesome power of asking DIRECTED QUESTIONS of myself. I have mentioned the power of directing your mind positively through the artful and scientific use of questions at other times in this blog and through the years in my writings and workshops.

I found that by fully immersing myself with powerful positive messages over and over during the day that may moments transformed. Since the moments transformed the days did and the weeks and months and years. Every moment was a choice point and a positive possibility. I could go in either direction. Where I went would be up to me. Sometime, I got caught up and found myself moving into negativity and had to find away to turn around and head back toward focusing on the positive.

I found by taking control and managing the moment I had incredible power. That power is having a choice in how I think and respond, how I feel and act. I discovered I was becoming the captain of my soul and the master of my fate. I found things to begin to feel good about and appreciate that I had not considered before. Many things changed for the better quite quickly and other things took some time but positive changes did occur.

Later on I learned the awesome and incredible power of FEELINGS.” Rex Sikes

More on this next time. We will pick up with feelings and much more. Meanwhile, make today the most wonderful day you can, and then some!

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