“Positive thinking is a misnomer. It is not merely about thinking a thought which is positive it should mean making positive choices. Whenever I mention positive thinking I mean exercising the power we have to find and think the very best thoughts needed and focus on these. It means we find and choose to feel the very best feelings we can that are useful each moment. It means we seek and find find within us the very best resources that are useful in whatever situations we may be going through.

Resources ARE our inner thoughts, memories, beliefs, experiences, talents, whatever we have from our past too, that contains some of the necessary ingredients for the present moment. Hence, resources can be anything that helps us change our difficult moment into better ones The key is deliberately bringing our minds back to the best, the most beneficial, even the most “positive” thoughts and sticking with them. The same applies to finding our best feelings. 

When we do this repeatedly we train our neurology, we train ourselves to make a habit of finding the very best and most useful of what we have and to use it in each moment, and especially when needed. We can transform the mundane to the more delightful, it need not be only when we face challenges. The idea is to seek and experience the optimum each day, each moment. Find and experience the best. Live life better than just “okay”.

As we do this moment to moment through out each day, for weeks and months we are developing the habit. What may start off difficult becomes easier and easier through the repeated effort. After a while, the habit begins to take over and there will come a point in which this is just the natural way you live and think. 

It works the same way you learned to ride a bike or drive a car. It was tough, lot’s to pay attention to, perhaps even frustrating, but as you stuck with it the tasks became easier until it became easier. Ultimately, you can drive without even thinking about how to drive. It has become a skill and a habit.

This practice result in incredible flexibility, resourcefulness, useful beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, feelings and behaviors we have that transform the moment and transform our self overall.

Since whatever we focus on expands why not focus on what is most useful and beneficial and resourceful? I never encourage pie in the sky wishful, fanciful thinking but practical and deliberate choice making that results in finding the optimum thoughts, and emotional states from which to pursue our goals, resolve our difficulties and live our lives more wonderfully.

Positive thinking means having more choices available. It means deliberately exercising your control to find the best and then making it a habit and becoming unconsciously competent in positively evolving yourself. It means that whatever you focus on, expands, gets larger and becomes your reality so why not choose the best?

If you focus on crap and problems you stay with the crap, if however, you focus on solutions you can find solutions. If you focus on misery you can find it if instead you focus on happiness or joy or peace you can find more that for yourself. The choice of what we focus on, what we choose to entertain, to fill our mind and our time with determines how we feel and think and do. The problem for most people is not exercising choices as they could or simply making poor choices or having poor taste.

Aim for the best and you will find it. It may take time but you will find it if you stick with it. You can’t give up and quit because then you never will. Challenges will come up along the way just as there are hazards occasionally on the road which you must navigate around. In the same way challenges will always be a part of living, there will always be things for us to confront or solve. When you learn how to make better positive choices these challenges become useful to help remind us what to do – choose the positive, the resourceful, steer back to center, direct you mind again take charge. Negative feelings provide the same signal service.

The wise person recognizes the less than glorious feeling as a signal that they needs to focus differently, to change what they are thinking, doing or acting in order to begin to feel better. It is a signal to seek within yourself to change your “discomfort” into something that is feels better.

Yes, you may have to do it again and again for many moments, you may have to stick with it for quite a while, but eventually, it will give way and you will have benefited by exercising your choice to look for and find more positive thoughts, feelings and behaviors. This is what builds the habit. This habit is built by the challenges and less good feelings because if you only did it when you were just feeling good that is the only habit you would have. You want to transform your life and become in charge and not be a victim but a victor. That only is possible if you learn how to transform the difficult moments into better moments.

Learn how to transform your thoughts and feelings whatever you think and feel. Decide to take control and be in charge of yourself, your mind and your body and your experience in life. Be the captain of your ship and steer it through tough and troubled waters successfully as well as the calm and peaceful enjoyable seas.

You will find far better times and opportunities by doing this and making it a habit than if you focus on pain, misery, suffering, and crap because that will result only in more of that.

The choice is ours each moment.

If you haven’t chosen the “positive” much, or if it doesn’t seem to work well in your life it only means you have been practicing the wrong approach up until now. You need to change what you are doing if you want your life to change. You can do it! You can begin and find that in doing this and sticking with it your life improves in ways that you could never have imagined prior to going through the journey for change.

Take small steps at first, you will be able to handle larger as you proceed. It will be tough at times, most assuredly it will be, but be gentle and forgiving and accepting of yourself as you practice this. When you don’t do what you want do not berate yourself but accept it and move on to what you want to be able to do. When you become aware you are thinking negative or feeling negative at that moment steer your thoughts to good thoughts, the resources within you and find a better feeling or activity to engage that leads you in the positive direction.  

Yes, you must keep doing that as often as you can and as you do you will ultimately break through, you will find results, gradually at first, when you remain steadfast in your practice. There will come a time, sometime in your future, when you will be surprised at how your thinking and feeling is transformed and working positively for you. Unfortunately, no one can tell you when that is because that is all up to you and how often and the quality of your practice.

Behavioral science suggest that we can develop a new habit in 21 days with constant correct practice, and while that may be true, I would commit to no less than 30 days or even 90. Somewhere between 30 and 90 days you will find it getting easier and much much more rewarding than you can imagine. You will be delighted. If right now, 90 days seems like a long time to take to begin to completely revolutionize your life – change that thought. That is the first one you need to “do over” and decide now to make the commitment. Once you engage this process for yourself your experience will change for the better even if outer circumstances don’t at first.

With time you will learn to change and affect not only your inner self but what you can accomplish in the world through positive planning and action steps. If it is ever going to happen you need to begin now.Once you are on the path stay on it no matter what. Don’t give up. My experience and those I know who have decided to be in charge is that you won’t want to. It may seem tough but you will be gathering evidence as you move forward that it is working and you will want to continue.

Be diligent and have fun with this practice. Yes have fun. Enjoy, celebrate, take it lightly and you will find wonderful things in store, many marvelous and amazing things in store for you.

You will unleash a powerful positive person, the one that is inside you wanting full expression in your life. You will be able to become the person you always wanted to be. You will begin to make you life the life you always wanted. You will never do that thinking “I can’t or Life sucks” thoughts but you will when you think “I can and Life is great” thoughts no matter what you encounter. Make it a point to do it now. If you wait, you wait. So begin today!” Rex Sikes

Make yourself and others smile A LOT today!