Life – it’s all about riding the peaks & troughs
It’s hard to stay on track towards the things that you really want. And I don’t mean stuff that you kind of want, I mean the things that really matter. Life goals, aspirations and dreams. But how do you stay on track when things get bleak? It’s so vital to have strategies in place for when things don’t go as planned. Life will always be in peaks and troughs. It’s impossible for anyone to have life that is up all the time, it’s just not the way life works and if it was just up all the time we would not have any opportunities to grow. And unfortunately the opportunities that often provide the most growth come from ones in the troughs! But look on the bright side, when you have troughs you have a chance to change something and have it so that next time there’s a trough, it’s just a small low not a huge dive downwards.
As much as people probably think it isn’t so, we do have choice in how low our troughs are. People who tend to be more dramatic will create bigger troughs. Have you ever heard people who say “I knew that was going to happen” or “that always happens to me”? They are not then surprised when those things do happen and happen to them as that is what they were expecting.
One important lesson is that the universe is waiting to deliver on what we expect. If you expect to have a bad day you can pretty much bet you will have one. If you expect to have problems with a person at work it will more than likely happen. If you think life is hard it will be. The universe is not attached to what it sends you, but it will send you what you think about the most and for most people this isn’t good!
Think about it. Do you spend more time thinking about the great things that can happen to you that day, or the bad things that might happen? Most people will say the bad things. The problem is this type of thinking is addictive, one thought spirals to the next and then when one of those thoughts is realized the negativity spirals down trapping you below it.
The problem with these parts of the personality is they want to be kept alive and they do this by thinking in this way. The more they get to think negatively, be dramatic, think of the bad things that can happen, will happen, have happened the more power they have in the personality. Then you find yourself trying to talk yourself out of it remembering the great things you have in your life but that voice is so small and so insignificant compared to the booming voice of the drama or negativity.
Some things prolong how much time you spend listening to this voice. Hanging around with friends that are like minded talking you into feeling bad, gossiping about the drama or the negativity with you. Drinking too much alcohol, taking drugs and eating too much ads to the bad feeling you have about yourself.
On the contrary spending time thinking about what you would like to happen has profound effects on the personality. People report mood increases and relaxation and feeling more positive. And did you know that the brain doesn’t know the difference between what is imagined and what is real. That means if you imagine yourself having something awful happen to you, it might as well be happening in reality as you feel the effects of it anyway. But conversely if you imagine great things happening to you, that job working out, getting a raise, meeting a new partner or friend or just feeling great about yourself you also get the benefits of that being real even if it takes a few days, weeks or months to actually manifest. What matters is you have felt the result of that thinking in your present life.
So next time you go off track stop. Acknowledge how you have gone off track and what are the things you do (and you know what they are) every time you go off track. Then spend some time visualizing how you would like things to happen, how you’d like to feel and how that would look in your life. 5 minutes a day can change your life.
