Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life

This is where Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth, comes in for me. In it, he encourages being aware of what is going on in the present moment ... to keep one's thinking present to what is happening right now, right where you are. Be aware of your breathing, your surroundings, your current state of being.

I've learned, through practice of presence, that if I keep my thinking in the present moment, I can generally get rid of persistent negative thinking.

When I was in counseling, one of the things my counselor helped me with diligently is how to recognize my own negative thinking so that I can change it. Besides learning to purposely insert positive thoughts into my day, I also needed to learn to replace the negative thoughts that tend to loop in my brain over and over. I don't know that I had 'avalanches' of negative thoughts ... my problem was more like having the same negative thought repeat itself ad nauseum.

One of the greatest tools my counselor gave me was this simple statement:

It's just a passing thought.

How simple! How profound. That phrase made so much sense to me. As I considered it, I added a bit to it that made the idea even more valuable to me:

It's just a passing thought.
Like a traffic circle,
I can veer out of the loop at any time.

Once I recognize my perpetually looping negative thought, I can then choose to ease out of that loop whenever I'm ready. Once on a new path, I can replace the negative thought with one of my positive phrases.

By changing my negative thoughts, I can change my circumstances.
By changing my circumstances, I upgrade my life.