We live in a world of stimulus–response. Just the thought of
stimuli (anticipatory anxiety), leads to an automatic response of resistance,
resentment, and revenge. This is accompanied by defending your position
of being right, which leads to excessive emotions of anger,
depression, anxiety, or guilt. There is no win in this scenario. It’s the
route to being a victim and blaming, further fueling excessive emotions.
You need a “cognitive” strategy to create a new pathway.
As it is now, you are addicted to the emotional pathway. It’s like a well-worn
path, and you naturally select it. In response to any circumstance (stimulus)
your brain searches for the known pattern (response) and completes the circuit
(anticipatory anxiety)—unless you change it.
Here’s how. Create a new circuitry. Separate the right brain,
emotions, from the left-brain (what to do, decisions, strategies) with thought
control. Silently repeat to yourself, the words “love and gratitude”
to program the right brain. Also silently repeat the phrase, “I respond
to frustration with fascination.” Your brain can’t tell whether
you believe this, or if this is real and true or not. It will simply respond as
if it was true.
With practice, you can create a new response to the stimulus. With
constant conscious, willful repetition, this new response of love and gratitude,
frustration into fascination will become the default response. You will create
a new habit, a new “addiction”, a new automatic way of being. No one
will know how you did this. All they will see is that you are calm and have a
powerful presence around them. Through repetition, the desired response will strengthen,
and the old response will atrophy.
Simply cancel out destructive thought that leads to excessive emotions
and replace them with the opposite thoughts, such as turning frustration into
fascination, remaining calm, and thinking love and gratitude. This not only cancels
the destructive thoughts, but it also regenerates new positive thoughts.
Your thoughts will generate a neurological pathway. You can control
the nature of your thoughts. You either forfeit this control or allow someone
else to dictate it (thus becoming a victim), or you direct it with your conscious
thoughts until it becomes a habit.
Thoughts are real. Your brain constantly forms neurological connections,
new learning, throughout life. Thoughts transverse from electrical to chemical
to physical. For example, with practice, people without arms can direct artificial
arms through their thoughts.
Dr. Masaru Emoto has shown the impact of thoughts on water crystals.
He exposed distilled water to varies influences such as the words or phrases,
love and gratitude, I hate you, thank you, and a variety of music. He
then froze the water samples and took a picture of the water crystals that formed.
He noticed a dramatic positive or negative influence on the water’s ability
to form the crystals.
As a person who is committed to excellence, you must control your
thinking. A positive thought powerfully affects your physiology and your actions,
as does a negative thought.
It’s a matter of making a decision, adopting a standard, and
living with near zero tolerance for negativity and unhealthy circumstances or
people in your life. These people or circumstances won’t disappear, but
your reaction to them will be more powerful, peaceful, calm, constructive, and
resourceful in all situations. PE
