Mastering Your Mind
summer fun 2025
Four step process
Become aware of my thoughts.
Desire personal change.
Notice negative thoughts, interrupt with thanks for their opinion.
Replace with positive thoughts of a thematic consistency.
Awareness here is the realization that you have negative thoughts. Without this preliminary step change will never happen. This is the self awareness needed for any kind of personal change. When I realize that my body is unhealthy, overweight for example, then I may start to take action to change my body. This is the same on a psychic level concerning thoughts. It is possible to not even see that some thoughts are negative. This also means that there can be specific kinds of thoughts which are negative, while other parts of your thought processes are neutral or positive. Thus, I also want to become aware of when, where, what, who of, and why am I having negative thoughts. I ask each question and try to become aware of patterns, places, times, and reasons or experiences that are connected with having negative thoughts. When do I have negative thoughts? In the morning? When driving, with specific people? What negative thoughts do I have? Money, relationship, self, family, work or even purpose thoughts plus many more can be negative. Do I think negatively about specific people, kinds of people, or myself? Do I have negative thinking about events, experiences, accidents, and mistakes? Some of these experiences will naturally have a negative response, and that is okay. You want to become aware of the excessive habitual and unwarranted negative thoughts that lead to false perceptions and the deterioration of my self worth. I also ask where am I having negative thoughts, at work, parents house, the bar, gym or church? I notice the patterns and see exaggerated, habitual negative thoughts that are going on over long periods of time. This inventory of negative thoughts will be the awareness needed to initiate personal change.
Now that we have become aware of our negative thoughts and their pattern of occurrences, to want to change is necessary and is the next step. There are a number of obstacles to wanting personal change. Self acceptance is good, but it can also be the lazy path. Saying, “that is the way I am”, is actually an excuse that steers you to avoid change. Once we are aware of the negative thinking, then we have to desire personal change. This is the healthy need for growth and improvement which comes from the desire for a better life by raising self worth and improving relationships. This is having the passion for more; not of more things though, but of more enjoyment, love, success and a deeper more fulfilling life. Struggles are a natural part of living, and the pain of failures are not necessarily a bad thing, because it is these energies which inspire us to personal change and generate the passion needed to want to change.
Change happens in the moment, not as some conceptual wish to be different. Change is not the fantasy of being different, it is the actual and-or tangible alteration of action, or in this case thinking. To do this in thought is to notice the thinking that is negative in real time/space experience there and then. This means we need to notice in the moment of occurrence that we are having a negative thought.
Remembering a negative thought experience later, after the fact will not change anything, except our awareness that we have those negative thoughts. This is still step one then. To move to step three in changing our thoughts we must be able to notice the unwanted thinking when it is happening.
Being able to notice negative thoughts in the moment requires that we want to change, because it is this passion for a better life that will remind us in the moment to notice that we are doing something we do not want to do. Negative thoughts are a form of mental habit, and the only way to stop a habit is to notice it when you are doing it.
Once you notice negative thoughts we will stop the thought. This may be difficult. It takes a tremendous will to break a habit, which again demonstrates the importance of wanting to change.
The trick to stopping a habit is to immediately replace it with some more acceptable behaviour. Since we are dealing with thought and negativity we will first shift from the negative into the positive. I’m sure that there are multiple ways to move into positivity, so this is the way I do this. I say to myself, “thank you for your opinion; I appreciate your input. Now I am letting it go and releasing the negative thought.”
In this case that means replacing it with a conceptually similar positive thought. So when I have negative thoughts about my life, family, finances and-or health, I will be grateful for the opinion, and immediately replace it with a pre-agreed upon new positive thought. Then I can consciously remember something good about the same thing. I will dwell on something I am thankful for in relation to this concept. Once I have had more than a few different positive thoughts, then will I let go of intentional thought and move bank into the flow of my natural thoughts.
That is step four. If there was another step it would be: repeat as needed. The repetition creates new habits when practiced consciously for a long while. Sadly, I do not have a precise time prescription. I still have negative thoughts, and I have been practicing for twenty five
years now. I must also add that they- the negative thoughts- are much less. I no longer get caught in negative downward spirals of thought and feeling. I can now catch my negative thoughts quickly (quicker), easily release them in gratitude with positive thoughts. I am becoming the master of my own thoughts.
It is my prayer that these thoughts will be useful for you in creating real, long term personal change. I believe my prayers do come true and feel gratitude that you have read this short description of a very powerful psychic tool. May you find it easy to use. And may you grow, through use, into a better person.
Love and peace
Chris
