“Are you ever down or lack energy? Does it seem that sometimes your thoughts or feelings carry you where you don’t want to go? Have you tried to get ahead or feel better but you just keep getting more of the same? If you answered yes to any of these questions you are not alone.
There are some things you can do that bring change about quickly. I have shared many of these with you in this blog. Please go back and read through the blog again and again as many great golden nuggets will leap out at you through multiple readings.
I have been discussing gratitude and feeling grateful is one of the quickest ways to changing how you feel for the better. You have to do it to get the change you can’t just give lip service to it. The way to feel grateful is to look at your present life and your past and find everything and everyone you are actually thankful for. It can be very tiny or very large. Everything counts! There are scores of things you take for granted. Go back and find these. What are they? You can write them down. That is a great practice.
What are the things you feel grateful for? Then notice WHY you are grateful for them. What are the reasons? This is an important piece. What and Why! You want to actually FEEL grateful and these help.
For example, ‘I am grateful for my feet. They have carried me near and far. All my life I have traveled and my feet have carried me and supported me. I would not have been able to do much or all of what I have done if I didn’t have feet that worked so well. They have taken me on adventures, gotten me in trouble, but I have seen and experienced so much because of my feet. My toes, the bones, the joints, the tissues. Everything about my feet I am thankful for.’
It can be anything! All your bodily processes, your muscles, your organs, your health and well being, you ability to think and remember, your ability to speak, see, hear, touch, taste, smell, read and write, The people in your life, good and bad, the lessons you have learned as a result of challenges. The challenges and opportunities that have helped make you who you are today. All events, situations and circumstances. Your things, where you have been. Your education or lack of it. EVERYTHING is available for you to list.
It is important to be really thankful to feel it. Just reciting a list will not get you very far. Yes, it is better than not doing anything at all and it may be the grease that makes the wheel eventually move smoothly but the point is to ACTUALLY FEEL gratitude. So what are you grateful and why. Spend at least 5 minutes every morning when you first get up. Before your feet hit the floor count your blessings! It is a great way to energize your day.
Too many people get out of bed dreading what the day may bring or that they have to be ending their sleep. Learn to greet the day with enthusiasm, with vim and vigor as they say! Get excited about what the new day will bring. After all it is an entirely new day. The only thing that keeps it the same as yesterday is our perceptions and routines. So shake them up add in some fun and some novelty and enjoy the new day. Feel better.
Do your five minutes gratitude prior to going to sleep, You are always welcome to do for longer, but 5 minutes twice a day is practical for you. It is easy to accomodate.
Another thing you can do that we have discussed in past posts is to shift your physiology. Move your body into productive postures and movements. For example, You can stand up and imagine what you look like, stand like and move like when you have 5 times the amount of energy you presently have. Actually move your body, shake it up. You have to be willing to play to win so do it!
Then do 10 times, 20 and more. Move you body and walk around feeling the added energy. It is pretend but it works! When you move your body into the same physical arrangements as when you are feeling great you begin to feel great. It is hardwired into your neurology. You can’t help but to begin to re-experience it!
If you want to be more confident stand with shoulders back, chest out, chin up look ahead, strut, stomp, walk and move, breath as someone who has lots of confident. Move and talk and act as you do when you do feel powerful and secure and confident in yourself! Do it. It is pretend but it works! You are behaving now as you do when you have had these feelings in the past. Any feeling you have is yours to re-live and make work for you.
See yourself in your mind’s eye when you are filled with confidence and power and acting resourcefully. Listen to how you sound when you speak with authority and purpose. Feel the feelings as you look and listen. Feel the feelings as you do the behaviors of behaving with confidence and power. Notice how good it feels to actually do this.
Whenever you want to feel instantly better,stop what you are doing take a deep breath or two or three and shift you physiology. Really do it. Stand or sit as you would feeling better. Remember vividly times in your past when you felt good or felt great. Choose one and relive it in your mind and then try it on with your body and movements. Use your body and your voice the same way. Find other times too if you want. Re-live it.
You lived it your body knows it. Your brain knows it. You know it deep inside. So re-activate it. You re-create it inside and outside. You put it on as you would some clothes. You do it as an actor would do it. You re-live it and when you do, even in pretend, your brain and body bring back the feelings of feeling good. It is awesome and it is powerful!
You already do this, outside of conscious awareness, to feel good and not so good. Your body has body memory. Now, you are taking deliberate conscious control of a mechanism that already works reliably and you are aiming it at what you want instead. You are making it work for you by choice, by making a positive decision in the moment when you need it. You are taking charge of it!
After you have done it and have changed your feelings imagine other times in the future when you might want to feel better again. What would be the triggering thought, event or person that might make you feel less than glorious.? Run it in your imagination, see the triggering moment and then choose to feel better.
Watch yourself change it from less than resourceful into feeling what you want to feel instead. Run some of these movies in your head. Pick another two or three situations in your life and see you move from less than glorious to glorious. You are using what your body and mind already do purposely. You are learning to skillfully take charge of it and become more resourceful. This is another skill to be grateful for.
Learn to run your brain and make it work for you! Learn to take charge or your neurology to serve you. You make the decision and instruct your unconscious what you want to do. You keep doing it and you make it a habit.
You make a positive habit of deciding to act on you own behalf and transform your less than glorious moments into more glorious ones. Use it at every opportunity and even when you don’t need it in the moment. You can use it anytime you want to feel better.
Since your mind and body already know what to do all you have to do is steer it productively. The more you do this the easier and quicker it becomes. The more you make it a habit the more you will delight and surprise yourself. You will discover yourself more delighted and enjoying life overall. Correct repetition builds habits.
These are two very powerful, positive, productive ways you can instantly turn a less than glorious moment or feelings into better ones. They will not do you any good at all unless you actually do them. Remember, you can fake it till you make it but you have to engage the processes! The goal is to transform more of your moments in your day into feeling good moments.
You get what you predominantly think and feel during each day. When you are feeling wonderful and on top of the world your energy is higher and more positive. When you are living mostly in high frequency positive energy you attract and create more of the same.
You literally vibrate at a higher level. All good things can come to you when you live in gratitude because true appreciation is one of the highest forms of energy. So make it a point to feel as good as you can any moment of the day. Even if it is not ecstatic the goal is to aim yourself into feeling better or as good as you can.
Go for all the gusto you can AND keep in mind that you want to feel the best you can. It is not about plastering a fake greeting card smile on your face when times are tough. There are times when we may grieve or feel less than happy. These are true moments. Accept that.
In these times make it a point to help yourself feel a little bit better. Baby steps are fine and may be all you can seem to take. The goal is not to feel worse so if you try to make to big a leap into feeling wonderful and you don’t feel it. Stop.
Stop and take some deep breaths, take a nap, a break, and later, a little while later, make a smaller move towards feeling better. This is still making it work for you because you are gently aiming your energy in a more positive direction. So there may be times like this. Most of the time you can move forward into feeling incredible.
When every fiber of your being lives in a state of appreciation for whatever is in your life, good and bad, because YOU KNOW that even the bad has seeds of opportunity YOU are living well. YOU are able to see opportunity you otherwise might not, you feel incredible, you attract and create all good things. Birds of a feather flock together. Like attracts like. You become what you think about. Do these things. If you haven’t already started begin today. You will transform your life when you do!” Rex Sikes
Have a wonderful fun filled day!
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