If you were in a canoe in the middle of a large river or lake and suddenly needed to be on the shore you know that you cannot teleport. You can’t jump that far either. At the same time you know you need to keep an eye on where you are headed. Negative self talk and staring at the canoe bottom won’t get you there any faster.  You have to navigate to where you need to and want to be.

Continued from: The Power of Thinking Positive! How To Make Your Thoughts Work For You Parts 1-7

So you paddle. Each stroke gets you there bit by bit. With consistent effort you get there eventually. The time will go by swifter if you are in a good frame of mind rather than a poor frame of mind. We all know this about the passage of time. The point is you can’t jump, you can’t make that large of a leap. You have to get to the shoreline incrementally. You get closer with each paddle you make.

Sometimes we discover that we are in a funk and we want to feel better.  We want to feel ecstasy but that is too big a leap from where you are at. You have to incrementally move toward ecstasy one paddle at a time.

First, maybe you need to take a walk, calm down, talk it out to dissipate the energy, use some relaxation methods or NLP technique to chill and get some distance. You need to get into neutral and from neutral move forward toward ecstasy. Remember, you move forward one paddle stroke at a time.

For example: Eventually, you  move  from devastation to okay, then from okay to not so bad, then on to feeling better and from better to amused. Then you move from amused to calm well being  and from there toward a subtle happiness. From happiness you move to exhilaration and from there to ecstasy. You do it in steps or stages moving only as fast as you can change from one feeling to the next better one. Don’t rush.

Some form of this process occurs when left alone. When you don’t actually seem to do anything. This is what can happen anyway given enough time. ‘Time heals all wounds.’ The healing occurs as we move from the one  stuck state bit by bit to other emotional states of being.

We eventually move on and leave the less than glorious feelings behind. This IS what happens when we say time heals all wounds. You begin to get free to behave  in other ways. Actually, you do participate in the process but very, very slowly and mostly outside of consciousness. It just seems as if time is the great healer but,in reality, it is the changes you adopt during the lengthy time frame that are.

To take charge of your feelings means you become aware and recognize where you are at. You acknowledge where you are  and accept it. You allow it, even thank it, because it is a signal. You may not feel total gratitude at first but go through this process enough times and you’ll get better at it.  Through spaced repetition it will become automatic.

Be grateful when you recognize that you are stuck or resisting. It could be your own thoughts and feelings or behaviors that you resist. You could be resisting another person who presents a challenge, or events and circumstances that aren’t to your liking. Whatever it is, once you recognize it or become aware of it in the moment, you then feel thankful that you are moving into freedom to feel and be anything else.

From stuck (which you know you don’t want) you have to choose  what you’d rather feel instead. It should be different than what you are currently feeling and just a little bit better or more positive. If you are depressed anger would be a more positive step because when angry you tend to do things. You are active and engaged when feeling anger.

You choose  baby steps back toward feeling awesome. There are signals that accompany each step. If you take too big a leap and you feel frustrated, or saddened or worse, go back and make a tiny step.

Do not get caught up in thinking about things too much. Let go. If you can’t easily decide on what the next baby step is then just take a guess. GUESS! Guess whatever feeling state might be more appropriate to move to. Try it

If you get a signal  that what you tried isn’t the right one, guess again. Repeat this until you get the relief. When you do this you learn a great many things and train yourself to be so much more resourceful. I will address more of this later. When you can’t consciously pick a more resourceful state  trust your inner wisdom by taking a guess. Both work! You can be delightfully surprised.

Anytime, ANYTIME,  you encounter negative feelings or feeling stuck or resistance, you course correct. You move back toward neutral and then back toward positive. This is what  a guidance system does, this is what happens in autopilot. This is what you would do if you were driving to another city and you discovered you went off the course. You would turn around and course correct. You navigate back to where you want to end up.

This is what I mean by controlling you emotions. When you take charge of your thinking and feeling you do not force yourself to feel other than you do. What we feel is important and we can feel many things. You do not invalidate your feelings all of them are valuable.

This is an incredible skill to learn and as with all skills you learn by doing. The more you have an opportunity to do this, to repeat it, and you make the correct actions the faster you make it a positive habit.

You learn how to let go and accept whenever it is necessary. You validate all emotions.  Pain is an indicator that something needs attention in the body or the psyche  so that it can be healed and resolved.  We may not like the sensations but the signals are there for very important reasons. The signals are their to get our attention so that we engage in the correct actions to remedy what is wrong.

If you hurt yourself of feel ill the signals are their for you to seek attention, stop activity that might further  injure, rest, relax and recover. Pain serves a very useful and important function.

Many people  tend to fight and ignore the signals until the problem is larger than it would have been had they caught it early enough. If we are able to catch the beginning point of the emotion we can prevent what is called ’emotional flooding’ wherein we get saturated with feelings from the chemicals surging inside us.

When the sensations are wonderful we don’t mind so much but if they are painful we don’t like it and resist it. Then we hurt all the more.  Imagine a snowball on the top of a huge mountain. If it rolls down it gathers snow becomes very large and practically unstoppable. The more it travels and the larger it becomes the more momentum it has. It can devastate everything in its path.

In order  to stop the negative feelings we have to  catch the feelings when they are only a tiny snow ball atop the mountain. If we can catch them when we first get the signal we can prevent them from becoming to large.  The opportunity presents itself each time we feel less than glorious. The signal is there for us to pay attention to.

The signal is there from the onset.  What each of us needs to do is learn to recognize it and acknowledge it. Accept it, be grateful we got the signal and then nudge ourselves to feel something a little less ‘bad’. We nudge ourselves toward feeling a little more positive. This is how we can prevent the snowball from crushing the village below. We circumvent the disaster when we learn to do things a new way.

You can do this. It is possible. It gets easier and easier. Trust me you don’t have to find times to do this exercise they will seem to appear all on their own. You simply want to take advantage of them as they occur.You may make mistakes, that is okay. You may have been doing things another way for much of your life. When you begin to learn to do things in a new way there is a learning curve so be gentle with yourself. Whenever you notice yourself thinking or feeling less than glorious give yourself a gentle nudge.

For more than 20 years in my live seminars I have taught this and other powerful processes that countless students have used with great success. It works. They did it so can you!

Here is some very good news.  If any one human can learn to do anything all the rest can too. While it is true that some may be naturally better than others ANYONE can learn what another person has learned to do.

If you are 4’6 you may not get to play basktetball with the giants but you can become the best 4’6 basketball player to ever hit the courts. You have to know that the potential resides in you. It lies dormant until it is awakened.  You awake it  by determining what you want, defining your goal, and pursuing it passionately.

It doesn’t matter how young or old you are, tall or short, fat or thin, the color of your skin, your nationality, your religion or politics. Within you is great potential! Do not let it go to waste. Do not let anything stop you. Never let a ‘negative’ thought or feeling prevent you from living the life you deserve. Pursue your passions and make your dreams come true.” Rex Sikes

More will follow – meanwhile celebrate this day!

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