“Worry comes from what we think about and where we place our attention. So does the feeling of not being good enough. The trick is to put your attention where it’s useful (on the performance or what you’re attempting to do) and not on others or in self critique. When you split your attention, you get poor results. You must either be completely on the boat or on the dock, not a foot on each.

Focus is something you can learn. It’s a skill that improves with practice and dedication. It’s learning to pay attention to what’s wanted and let the other ‘stuff’ go. It’s a knack and you get better at it with repeated trial and effort. Remember, correct, consistent, repeated practice for long enough wires it in neurologically to make a new positive, reliable, more beneficial habit that can serve you well.

You must learn positive thought habits and positive thought management habits. It’s equally true of emotions and feelings, self-talk, speech and behaviors. You must wire in the new positive ones you want so you can think, feel, speak and behave differently to get the results you intend, instead of those that limit you, that you don’t want! You must exchange the old for the new. Out with the bad…

Change Your Thoughts And Transform Your Life

Positive thoughts help because you steer away from the less-than-glorious thinking to the thinking that’s useful and productive. It may seem to require effort, but it can be mastered by anyone. Energy goes where you place your attention. It’s simple to do. However, you must learn where to put your attention. Then make it a positive habit by habitually putting it there. You practice till you get good.

Learning to direct your thinking in positive and productive ways instead of letting thoughts run out of control as they have, causing difficulty. It is beneficial to learn to relax, let go and release the negative instead of fighting it. What you resist persists. What you push on pushes back. This gives you a positive two-pronged approach. Learn to let go of problems while steering thoughts positively.

Meditation benefits because it helps you relax, let go, release, observe instead of reacting, calm your thoughts and feel centered. You can reduce stress and anxiety and feel positive and powerful by learning how to place your attention where it needs to be. Just as you learned to do anything. Learning to play a musical instrument is a skill you can develop. There’s nothing mysterious about it!

Change Your Thoughts And Transform Your Life

You get good at playing music, or a sport or any ability through correct practice. You can readily make the change you want. You WILL have to apply yourself and KEEP with it until you get the results you want. You can do it. Start and keep at it. Take it bit by bit, step by step and you will surprise yourself. Practicing meditation and releasing pressure on yourself is a great help.

Call it meditation or call it awareness, mindfulness, noticing, observing, watching, releasing whatever name works for you. It’s the art of allowing things to be. Just seeing without judgement. Listening without labeling. Being without directing. Allowing. It’s being the dance, not the ego or the dancer. Allow yourself to disappear and only see, hear, feel and enjoy without self-intruding. Drop self-talk.

The self-talk remains but you don’t listen. You allow it without agreeing or disagreeing with it. You notice it’s just audio loops you’ve given credence to. You’ve bought into it and accepted it as true without knowing you were doing this. It runs on and on and you’re anchored to feelings that accompany the self-talk. It is not about stopping it but not getting sucked into it. Release it.

You Deserve To Live Life On Your Terms: Create The Life You Want

Release the connection. Get unhooked. Disengage. You can watch it without reacting to it. It may not be true and you have a choice. Your self-talk, like your self-image is not you. It is something apart from you that you have been identified with. You didn’t know you had a choice about it, so it became a habit without choice. However, now you can learn to free yourself and to choose. You must choose.

You can learn to let go of it AND also direct it so it serves you better. People, perhaps you, emphatically agree with what they think is the problem, the reasons, blames, excuses about what is wrong and why. They’re sure they know what’s wrong. It is what it is, damn it! They doubt, worry about it and fear what is going on. They don’t believe, they doubt they can be happy and successful.

What if you were to doubt the problems and limitations, you’re certain of and begin to believe with certainty you can make the goals, dreams and intentions you’ve doubted or worried about happen? Everything would be different! The good news is you can. You’re able. You just need to learn how and to wire it in as a new positive habit of thought. It requires you to shift what you’ve been doing.

Live Life On Your Terms: Create The Life You Want

There’s a learning phase you and I talk ourselves through. As you did when you learned to ride a bike or drive a car or any skill. There’s a time when you didn’t know you couldn’t do ‘it’ because you didn’t know about ‘it’. Then you found out about it and knew you couldn’t do it. Then you started to learn it and discovered you were klutzy at first. So much to manage. You talked yourself through it. Get it?

You started doing something you’d never done. So, you don’t know how to do it. You’re learning to do it BY doing it. Sometimes you do well. Other times you don’t. Both doing well and not doing well are part of the process. You talk yourself through it. People are self-critical because they learned to be going to school and growing up. You’ll learn faster if you suspend this criticism. You can too!

You try. Fail. Try again. If you stick with it, practicing correctly, repeatedly, consistently, ultimately, the process streamlines. You’re a beginner. With practice you get better. Given enough time you can begin to master it. Mastery is a life-long process that wires in. Once you get to a certain point you no longer must talk yourself through it. You do it from habit. It’s unconscious, automatic and reliable.

Change Your Thoughts And Transform Your Life

You become a competent bike rider or driver, or whatever it is you’ve practiced or rehearsed. This occurs because your subconscious, through this repetition process eventually makes it a habit. It becomes a reliable skill, and you no longer think about it or talk yourself through it. You’ve acquired the skill. It’s wired in. The same is true about getting over anxiety, feeling inferior or an impostor.

You practice the new way of thinking, feeling and doing. As you practice it won’t seem like magic but stick with it and eventually it will work like magic because you develop a new skill set! Just stick with it to get through the difficult or awkward phase. Many won’t. Learning to do this new thing is the same as learning to do anything else. We learn new things the way we learned the old things.

However, as a child you didn’t have a say in what you learned from others. You adopted their beliefs and believed the self-talk and feelings you were learning unconsciously. Now you must realize YOU learn new things by intending to. You decide. It’s with your conscious permission or approval, with the desire, the decision, the intention to do something new or differently AND that’s the difference.

If You Do Nothing, Nothing Changes!

The new habits come from doing the new thinking and behaving repeatedly while adjusting and correcting. You do it correctly, repeatedly for enough times over a period and you’ll develop the skill as a habit. Since you have learned many things, you can learn this too! You’ll do well as you move forward even though at first, it seems more difficult, sometimes even scarier, than it is. Know this!

Perception is everything. Mindset and attitude is the key! See what you want in your mind’s eye. Visualize and rehearse inside your mind feeling and performing as you wish to. Create and rehearse that inner reality. Develop the certainty in yourself and your abilities instead of doubting. Get it? Out with the bad and in with the good. Realize you have a choice. If you want coaching, I am available.

Live with the problem and negative feelings forever OR decide to change them. Take charge and begin to take the first step. Deciding what you want instead is the first step. Decide to manage your thinking and then start doing it. It begins in the mind, but the results are everywhere. Your thoughts, feelings and behaviors become more positive and productive, so your results shift for the better too! Get it? When you want better results you know what to do and how to call me. Celebrate everything!” Rex Sikes