Enough with the negative

"When you look within yourself and say you’ve had enough with the negative, you can begin to make lasting positive changes in your life.  You can remove from your life the sources of negative energy that make it harder for you to have a positive reality."

Not paying attention to the news for the last couple of years has made a huge difference in my life.  For years I wanted to keep apprised of current events and so read regularly from various sources.  But the overwhelming negative slant so many stories took painted a picture of an increasingly depressing world.  And it didn’t take long for that depression to weigh me down.

The first step towards correcting an overflowing bathtub is to turn off the water.  And that’s what I did with the media.  Yet I still wanted to know what was going on in the world.  How else could I be a responsible citizen?  Thus began the yo-yo days of switching between feasts and famine of media news in my life.

But the yo-yo approach wasn’t sustainable.  In the end, I chose to eliminate most media news from my life, largely because of its overwhelming negativity.  I couldn’t see how I could live a positive life when I regularly drank from the fountains of negativity, so I said enough with the negative in my life.  And as I said before, it’s made a huge difference.

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Improve your thinking

One of the first things I noticed after I eliminated that negative source from my life was an improvement in my thinking.  It’s hard to believe your world will be heavenly when every day you’re hearing about how the world around you is going to hell in a handbasket.

Once I eliminated the negativity, it became easier to believe in the possibilities of my future.  I found it easier to believe in myself and my ability to achieve my potential, that I could make the needed changes to allow the blessings the Lord wants to give me — blessings I want in my life — to come to me.

Understanding that doesn’t take an Einstein.  I’ve been saying for years that your focus determines your reality.  When you regularly entertain sources of negativity, it’s hard for your focus to be anything but negative.  And when you focus on the negative, your reality (otherwise known as your life) becomes filled with negativity.

Of course, the reverse is also true.  When you eliminate the negative from your life, it’s easier to focus on the positive.  And when you focus on the positive, your reality becomes filled with positivity.

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Improve your self-talk

The changes I experienced in my thinking then bled into my self-talk.  The messages I constantly gave myself became more positive.  It didn’t happen overnight, but slowly the negative became positive.

I’ve discussed self-talk many times before on the blog as well as this program.  It’s hard to believe in possibilities when you constantly tell yourself they don’t exist — or worse, that it doesn’t matter whether or not they exist because you’re just not worthy or good enough to have them.  If you repeat a lie long enough, you’ll start to believe it.

But you’ll also believe the truth when you repeat your encounters with it long enough.  Again, your focus becomes your reality.  The more you focus on the positive, the easier giving yourself positive messages becomes.  And the more you give yourself positive messages, the easier it is to focus on the positive.  This self-perpetuating cycle provides a strong foundation for a positive reality so long you keep it going.

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Improve your feeling

In an upcoming book I’ve been writing, I cite this statistic: Around 95% of how we feel comes from our self-talk.  That’s an amazing statistic because it means we choose how we feel.

That idea may sound like pig swallow to some, but consider this for a moment.  Most of what you feel comes from the messages you give yourself, messages you choose to give yourself.  You choose your focus.  You choose how to think and what to think.  You choose all these factors feeding into how you ultimately feel.  That means you can and do choose how you feel.

It then follows that when you choose positivity, you’ll feel positivity.  Thinking positive lays the groundwork for positive self-talk, which then colors your emotional state with positive energy.  All this focus on the positive can’t help but produce a positive reality.  And here’s the best part: It all happens with zero change in your circumstances.

When you look within yourself and say you’ve had enough with the negative, you can begin to make lasting positive changes in your life.  You can remove from your life the sources of negative energy that make it harder for you to have a positive reality.  When you do, you’ll start to see improvements in your thinking, your self-talk, and your emotions.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

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You can listen to the monologue from today's episode of Joy In The Journey Radio here.  Please also feel free to continue the conversation by leaving a comment below.  Want to hear more?  Listen to the whole show by going to the show page for this episode.