The Foundation of Positive Change

Awareness: The Foundation of Positive Change

The foundation of positive change is awareness. If you want to make a major change to a particular area of your life, you will need to first be aware of what exactly is holding you back from the outcome you desire. Almost always, the block is a mental one. The nature of your thoughts is responsible for your success and happiness, or lack thereof. Once you become fully aware of the negative thoughts that inhabit your mind, you can begin to eliminate them and replace them with positive thoughts that uplift you and propel you toward a greater future. In this chapter, I will describe a few methods for increasing your awareness, and thus enhancing your ability to think positively the majority of the time.

In our busy society, we rarely ever stop to analyze our lives in detail. Distractions are everywhere, and they can greatly inhibit our self-improvement. It is of crucial importance that you create the habit of daily relaxation and introspection, so that you can better understand your own mental blocks and formulate a plan to improve your circumstances.

Consider taking 5 to 10 minutes each day to do the following exercise:

Designate a time each day, preferably right before you go to sleep, to sit alone quietly with your thoughts. Instead of attempting to distract yourself with something, simply sit and listen to your inner voice. What is it saying? How does it make you feel at the moment? Reflect upon your day. What made you happy? Did anything upset you? Ask yourself these types of questions and really analyze every aspect of your life. Don’t judge your thoughts as “good” or “bad,” but just let them come and go naturally. After you’ve done that for a few minutes, get a piece of paper or a journal of some sort and just start writing down everything that comes to mind. Do not censor or edit yourself. Write for about 5 minutes without stopping. Then, read what you’ve written. After doing this a few times, it will give you a good indication of what types of thoughts are dominating your mind. From there, you can begin to make some noticeable changes to your overall attitude. 

Every time you do this free-writing exercise, go back through and re-read it to yourself, then highlight or re-write
one positive thing that stands out. If nothing about what you’ve written is positive, look back at your day again and force yourself to find one good thing about it. End each of these free-writing sessions with one positive statement and a statement that represents an optimistic outlook for the following day. 

So, your ending sentences might sound something like this: 

• Today, I had a really nice conversation with a co-worker, and that made me happy. Tomorrow, I’m going to try to smile more and eat at least one healthy meal.

This exercise is very simplistic, but please do not overlook the importance of it, because it is truly life-changing if done consistently. The simple act of writing down your thoughts dramatically increases your self-awareness, which is the starting point and foundation for all positive change. Ending each writing session with positive statements slowly re-programs your mind to focus more on the positive and less on the negative. What you focus on expands. Positive thoughts attract more positive thoughts, so if you can initially use some willpower to think more uplifting thoughts, your positive thoughts will eventually begin to outweigh the negative, and momentum is on your side once you reach that critical tipping point. Remember, it’s only hard in the beginning. The better you get at positive thinking, the more natural it will become, and success and happiness will come naturally as well.