Image courtesy of Zozu9

Most successful and confident people understand the value of having the right kind of mindset and outlook towards life. How you think and process information is critical to how you view everything around you. In this article (part 1), I will try to break down why it is crucial for you to get in the habit of controlling your thoughts.

There is a saying that goes something like this:

“You can choose to run your own life, or you can let life run you“.

Understand that you become what you think of most of the time. So if negative thoughts take up most of your brain space, then eventually you will become a negative person (trust me, negativity is the top confidence killer).

Think of yourself as a gardener. You can have some ugly weeds here and there, however for the most part you want your garden to look nice, and to do that you need to constantly maintain the flowers and plants. I know this is a pain in the ass for most people, because naturally our mind is lazy and unless we force ourself to control our thoughts, the brain automatically picks up negative and useless thoughts.

So what exactly do you say when you are talking to yourself? By that I am referring to both your inner thoughts and the words that come out from your mouth. Although this is a deep topic, I will briefly explain how to talk to yourself and will cover this topic more in depth in future articles.

The cool thing about your brain is that it doesn’t know what is true or false unless you specifically tell it. Big deal right? WRONG. Knowing this secret alone has made my confidence skyrocket. How? Simple, I just used the concept of “fake it until you make it“. Meaning that I would walk talk and act the way I wanted to be and slowly I started adapting these qualities as part of my natural character.

I also stopped telling myself things like “I can’t do it”, “life sucks”, “what a horrible day”, “why does everything go wrong with me” etc and so on.

Here are a few basic things you can do to start taking control of your mind.

1. Stop being negative around yourself and others. If you don’t have anything good to stay, then SHUT UP.
2. Stop limiting yourself by always saying that you can’t do it. Trust me on this one, most things in life can be learned and mastered. There are a very few things which are impossible to be good at.
3. Start feeding your brain positive thoughts on a daily basis from the time you wake up until you goto sleep.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a deep topic and will require more articles which I will publish as the blog progresses. But for now the key concept that I want you to take away is that you need to start controlling your thoughts.

Negative thoughts will eat you alive. It took me a while to get into the habit of being positive and although I am not always positive, I do have a strong sense of control over my mind and what enters it. This should also be your goal.

In the next mindset article I will talk more about how to feed your brain the right kind of words (affirmation statements etc). Now, don’t get me wrong here. I am NOT Mr. Positive nor could I care to be one.

The difference between you and I is that I know my limits. I understand my limits when it comes to being negative and as soon as I sense that I am crossing the limits, I simply stop being negative. This way the negative thoughts can’t take control of my mind. It is a bit tricky in the beginning stages to master, but once it kicks in then it simply becomes second nature.

There is so much I could cover on this topic, but I will purposely span it out over many many articles. Most people can’t grasp a lot of information at once so just stay tuned.

Until next time, talk soon.