Reprogramming My Brain

Lately, it’s been a chore of mine to stop myself from reliving past negative experiences in my head. I’ve been trying real hard to cut out all negative thoughts and either fill them with positive thoughts or positive words about myself. I’ve been waking up a lot in the middle of the night and have troubles going back to sleep because I’m thinking about so many things. Lots of things are going on and I can’t seem to turn off my brain that easily. But, I’m thinking the more I practice not letting my thoughts go to a negative place, not letting them go off on a tangent, the easier it will get. Maybe I will start to really seek control over my mind and gravitate toward more positive thoughts than negative. I spend way too much time thinking about my sensitive nature and worrying about future things overwhelming me. But, I’m sick of letting my mind run wild. It’s time I start fighting my negative thoughts with positive ones.

The Secret to Becoming More Positive and Even Happier

I learned something momentous about being positive this last week. Now I’m working to be more positive!

I know that I’m in control of my happiness and I can make the choice to be happy and seek it out, but that hasn’t been enough to keep me positive. I’ve been in a pretty negative place over the last few months due to my health. I got really angry about having health issues mostly because I was in a really happy and positive place before them. I was angry that life circumstances popped my positive and happy vibes, as if there were little bubbles floating around that I had no control over and no way to protect. I’ve never really had any health issue the lasted more than a couple of weeks so I didn’t handle the situation very well — as you might have sensed from my past blogs.

When all the numerous tests I had were basically done, and I was left with a most likely diagnosis, I knew I needed to focus on being more positive and being happier in order to focus on my business. Instead I felt the complete opposite. Instead I was an emotional mess. Then after a really positive networking experience it hit me — I can’t fix myself unless I fix the negative influence in my life. Sadly, my husband was an extremely negative influence on me. He was in a worse place than me. After being angry and having an emotional meltdown, my husband agreed that he needed to start being more positive. He needed to be more positive for himself, as well as for me. I don’t blame him for being a stressed mess because I’ve been just as bad, if not worse, at certain points in my life. However, enough was enough. We weren’t doing ourselves any favors.

I thought back to when I was in a happier place and what I was doing different and it occurred to me that I was reading a lot of positive and motivational books and articles. So I took my husband to the library and found him some audio books focused on being happier and being more positive. A light switch had already been turned on after I confronted him about his negativity. He decided to be more positive, but listening to the audio book has helped even more.

Some would laugh at the thought of reading self-help books, listening to CD’s on being more positive or anything of that nature. Some would think it’s for the weak. But, I’m telling you, it’s for everyone! Everyone can benefit from it. There comes a point in everyone’s life where they need it. I read about a lady who listens to that type of thing everyday for an hour. Science shows that a good percentage of our thoughts our negative and focused on the past. People are more easily stressed out these days. It actually makes loads of sense to read or listen to something motivational or positive everyday, or even a couple times a week. I’ve read and heard multiple times from so many people that as an entrepreneur I should be reading new books all the time to learn new things. Once I started really diving into reading books again I noticed a change in the way I felt.

Sure with everything my husband and I have been through we have a right to be stressed out and upset, but we needed to choose not to be. We chose not to be, and chose to seek out inspiration. That doesn’t always work too easily, but there’s a book on just about every problem out there. At some point I stopped reading books on a regular basis. I have never been big on reading, but I like books where I learn something. I now notice having a positive or inspirational book to read really had an impact in my life.

I think the best secret to being more positive is reading books. In the past I’ve tried to verbally provide my husband with motivational and positive lessons, and he has given me some himself. It didn’t help enough though. Even doing activities that made me happy didn’t really help. Spending more time with friends didn’t really help. Trying to help others didn’t really help. Seeking out positive reading and gaining a positive husband did. Seeking it out is key — we had to make the choice to seek out positive vibes, not have someone preach it to us. Also, with us both reading positive things there’s double the chance of us leading a more positive life. That way it isn’t always one person trying to bring the other one up, when the other is down, or worse just bringing each other down.

Lesson 1: Seek out motivational and inspirational books, always be reading something, or have something that you can refer to when your in a negative or stressful place.

Lesson 2: Have your significant other read something too, or whomever your living with because you don’t want them to bring you down, when they could be influencing you positively.

🙂 Hope your feeling some positive vibes. I’m not going to let my positive vibes get popped too easily from now on. I know I might fail, but I’m going to keep reading, and keep trying to be happier.

Being Born Instinctively Creative Makes Me Doomed

Warning: this is not one of my positive posts. Stop reading if that’s what your hoping for.

Being a creative person is an inherently a trait I’m stuck with forever. I love being creative it’s by far one of the favorite parts of my personality, but it also the part that dooms me. I can change my attitude and my actions to survive in this world, but I can’t change the fact that I need to do something creative in my work and with my life or else I will feel like a failure and lose sight of who I am.

I’ve been creative since I was a child and I had big dreams about being an artist and selling my work for money. Then, reality set in and I realized how difficult that was, and I didn’t have the confidence to pursue it. But, I do now with time and some job security. Then this week after having a nightmare that I was losing my house and everyone was looking down on me I went to work and was told my hours would be cut. Now I temporarily only have 12 hours a week. I was already struggling money wise and wanted more hours! Now I have less. It’s weird how my subconscious was telling me something was wrong, and I have been so optimistic lately my consciousness had been ignoring it. There’s like no new business coming in, and since I’m in the creative department I’m the one who suffers. I missed blogging last week because I was so focused on my own small creative freelance work that I’m trying to make money on. If I lose this job I will be crushed. Secure part time office jobs are really hard to come by where I live. The job I have now allows me to work part time being creative, and still pursue other dreams. This part time job was suppose to be stable and reliable. I also feel good about myself at this job.

I tried non-creative jobs. Almost every job I’ve had from high school to college and a bit beyond that just made me feel horrible about myself. I was told at this one warehouse job I couldn’t do the picking anymore because I keep messing it up – anything tedious for more than an hour and I start to space out due to boredom. Employers always looked down on me for struggling with these easy jobs. I also did a part time job at a hotel and they let me go in the training process because I was not learning everything fast enough. I even worked placing outbound calls and emails at a company and was targeted for needed some retraining. I tried to write my own responses to some emails I was suppose to reply to with copied text. I kept messing up and costing the company money when I had an email marketing job because it was incredibly tedious. Once I was laid off from that job I promised myself I would find something creative and I struggled for 9 months just to get this part time job.

It’s hard to find jobs that let me be creative in a horrible economy and it’s even worse trying to find a solid job for a creative person. I’m waiting for that one day when everything finally just starts to go my way. Waiting for better tomorrows. Waiting on the world to change.The world is against me and it’s winning! Even with my optimistic attitude and good self-esteem I’m no match for the world’s destructive nature.

I feel like the hulk, I have all this anger all bottled up inside but I’m trying to ignore it, and stop from turning into a monster and destroying stuff. I sincerely feel like breaking something right now.

Being instinctively creative makes me doomed to struggle through life. No matter how determined I am.

Accepting Who You Are

I’ve been struggling with accepting who I am all my life. As a shy sensitive introvert I’ve always felt out of place in this world. I’ve never felt like I fit in. I had little to no self-esteem when I was growing up, made worse by the fact that people didn’t understand me. I’m a very private person and my parents never gave me the space I needed. I often felt trapped. If you read my “Solving Your Life Puzzle” post I touch more on this and my difficult childhood.

I always felt like I had such a complex personality and was often confused by my own emotions. When I would get angry at someone I would struggle on whether to share my feelings or ignore them. I was conflicted on how to handle different aspects of my life. I’ve also had a hard time making decisions. I’m completely driven by my emotions and worry how my decisions will reflect my future emotions.

When I took psychology in high school I learned that I operate equally with both my left brain and my right brain. Learning this helped me to realize why I was so confused by my own personality. I also took the Briggs and Myers personality test and learned that I’m an INFJ. I remember when I walked up to the teacher to hand in my test he said my personality type was very rare. I knew I was different, but I didn’t know what to do with it at the time. When I’m faced with the challenge of being me I often think about that moment. Just yesterday I ran across a blog of someone who is also an INFJ. I had never seen such a long description describing this personality type and I couldn’t believe how much it described me. I just had to write this post after seeing it. If you’re interested you can read more about INFJ’s on her blog: http://truthloveunity.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/my-personality-type-infj/

Reading how I’m an INFJ and my personality type is the rarest kind of makes me feel special. After years of struggling with my self-confidence; these last few months I’ve finally started embracing who I am. I’ve always felt the pressure to change who I am to fit in and find a place in this world. I’m my biggest critic of myself and I’m often really hard on myself. I’m struggling right now because I know I should be doing other things right now, but all I want to do is write. I’ve ignored my drive to write for a long time and when I’m compelled to write it’s often when I’m busy doing something else. Like in high school I wrote poetry when I was suppose to be paying attention in class. But, I’ve learned that writing is a part of me. The problem is once I start I won’t stop or rest until all my words flow out of me. I can’t stand any interruptions because I know I might lose my train of thought.

What I’ve started to realize is there’s nothing more important than accepting who you are and being happy with it. I went to this networking event where a speaker said “You have control of only two things in your life and two things only! Your thoughts and your actions.” I’ve become a happier person through learning more about myself and accepting the bad with the good. The thing is we create the world we live in. The world is the way it is because we perceive it that way and because we take action in deciding how we want to live our lives.

I get so bored lately with my life and I want to change things, but the income isn’t there to do what I want. I’m trying to find a way to make money in this tough economy and I’m the most determined person I know, but yet I still struggle. Lately I find myself daydreaming about living a different life. Which upsets me but also makes me wonder what will really bring my spirit to life? What kind of career would make me excited to get out of bed every morning?

After writing this I’ve just come up with three more ideas on blog posts. I just can’t seem to stop my train of thought. I plan to write one on how to discover/create who you are and accept it as a follow up to this one.

That’s all for now. Hope to hear from you.