How Does Personal Development Growth Control Negative Thinking?
We control our feelings by working on the thoughts that precede them. We trap ourselves when we believe that events or people make us unhappy. It's simply not true. It is our thoughts about events or people that make us unhappy. Once we change our thoughts, different feelings will follow.
Negative thinking can strangle the meaning from our lives. Each of our lives is filled with countless wonderful opportunities. Yet almost all of us carry around a deep sense of resignation. The goals and opportunities we saw when we were young shrink until they fit with our disappointing experience. We begin to demand that our goals be workable, achievable, and if possible, guaranteed. When we can't see the likelihood of a favorable outcome, we become dispirited, with a sense of powerlessness about making a real difference in our own future, let alone that of others.
This is the much-cited life of quiet desperation. It is quiet because it is seldom discussed, especially if we possess some of the outer trappings of success. We expend a lot of energy maintaining the facade that our lives are "together." We worry about the way we look. Worry about what we own or possess. We worry whether we are doing enough. We get so busy either "doing" or feeling bad because we aren't "doing" that we mistake motion for progress.
We miss the real opportunities that are right before our eyes. We live in this contradictory state of frenzied activity. We tread water, not going anywhere, but we are too scared to stop for fear of drowning. Our lives become meaningless, not because we planned them that way but because we haven't stopped to listen, to question, to pray, to love or simply (with profound effect) to be still.
Submitted by: Ingrid Dreyer
www.personal-development-growth.com
