There is a very real problem in our thinking that is so dangerous and so prevalent in our lives that it kind of amazes me that no one has either talked about it or figured it out yet.
Ask yourself this question honestly.
Do you find yourself concentrating on the negatives and mistakes and regrets more than you do on the positives and the awesome things in your life?
Of course you know I have a story to share with you to demonstrate why this lesson is so important.
As you have figured out by now, I am a coach. It is hard for me to define my role as a coach because I work with so many different people from all walks of life.
But for this subject, I want to share my experience with you about my friend Matt who is a professional athlete.
He came to me because he was having a downturn in the success of his game. When you make your income through your successes or failures, you never want to experience a downturn and he was having a real hard time turning this around.
I asked him to describe his every day emotions to me.
He finally admitted that when he has a bad shot, he throws a tantrum. Literally throws everything around him and yells at himself and the ball and well its a ridiculous mess. And honestly embarrassing.
So I asked him to describe how he acts when he has a great shot. He was quiet for a minute and then he said to me..."Well its obvious that I feel good when I have a good shot."
I remember this interaction with him because he had no idea why i was asking him this question. Herein lies the issue that so many people have. We beat ourselves up and we are good at it. We dwell on the mistake whatever it is and we think it is okay. We don't even realize that we are manifesting the very thing we are beating ourselves up over.
These mistakes could be defined as anything that we wish we hadn't done. It can apply to ANYTHING in our lives. Anything...Relationships, work, personal habits and addictions, sports, social settings, mental attitudes...the list goes on and on.
On the other hand, do we dwell on the positive, happy successes as long as we dwell on the negative?
Do we celebrate the successes as much as we beat ourselves up over the mistakes?
Do we do cartwheels? Do we give ourselves a fist bump? Do we dance around and literally celebrate the accomplishment and make sure we are very clear in our heads that this is something very important to us?
If you will remember that your emotions are the keyboard to your brain then you will also be very careful how you are programing your brain.
More questions to ask ourselves. What have we programmed into our brains?
The positives or the negatives. If we are always in a negative emotional force about all the things in our lives, it is no wonder that so many high qualified and talented people are stuck and unhappy.
When you change the way you react to your life, emotionally, you will literally see the results.
Back to my friend Matt. We began to keep track of his successes. He started right away in celebrating all of the good shots and he also promised himself to downplay the mistakes. No more tantrums inside his own head or even in public.
You can guess what happened. His game changed but more importantly he told me later that not only did his game move back into being successful, his life as a whole became more deeply set in JOY.
Check yourself. Understand right now that this one thing. This little golden nugget I am giving you will quite literally change your life in ways that will become almost impossible to track. It wont just change your life but it will send out a ripple effect that will touch countless other lives.
Test it. Prove it. Put it into action. It isn't always easy to change the habits of our thinking but it is WORTH IT!!
Accentuate those positives in your life. CELEBRATE the successes and eliminate the negative force around the mistakes. Take them in stride. Learn from them but DO NOT DWELL OR THROW TANTRUMS around those mistakes. Program your mind to be successful by concentrating on the successes no matter how big or small.
This is the difference between the long time champions and those who aren't able to sustain it. But most important it is the difference between happiness and sadness. LITERALLY.