The Power of Your Thoughts and Emotions

If you have watched "the Secret" or read about "the Law of Attraction" you know that you bring about everything in your life based on the thoughts you have. What do you think about? I find it very difficult to sit and write down what I'm thinking about because thoughts are so fleeting. Some people are able to do that in their journaling and find it a very useful exercise. Most people don't or can't monitor what they think about. So how can they create the things that they want?

The truth is we think the same thoughts over and over again. We repeat the same things we learned as a child. Why? Our ego runs our mind, and our ego is just a collection of things we believe about ourselves. It is the story we tell about ourselves, often a story of "poor me". We learn very powerful lessons as a child; as we are like a sponge soaking up everyone's spoken opinion of us, which we take as gospel. If my mother or father says that about me, then they must be right because they know everything. By the time we get old enough to realize that they don't know everything, the lesson has been learned very effectively.

So, as adults, we still believe we aren't intelligent, or get upset too easily, or are clumsy etc, and we keep telling ourselves that. It becomes who we are. We live up to other people's opinions of ourselves. We never think about the source of our ideas or test them to see if they hold true. We don't even realize that our opinion of ourselves is just something we learned long ago. We just take for granted that it is the truth. So the first step to creating what you want is to monitor your ideas and question the beliefs you have about yourself that you keep repeating over and over. Test them out. That way, you get a better idea of your true capabilities.

Since it is often so difficult to keep track of our thoughts, God gave us emotions. There are basically only two types of feelings: good and bad, which we then break down into different intensities (for example, excitement is more intense than contentment). When you feel good, you are thinking a good thought (the kind that brings you what you want). When you feel bad, you are thinking a bad thought (one that takes you away from what you want). It is much easier to tell whether you feel good or bad than to determine what you are thinking. It is easier to know that you are feeling sad then to know whether you are thinking a bad thought.

So the secret to getting what you want is to make sure your emotions are positive, that you feel good, as much as possible. The most effective way to do that is to notice all the good things in your life. When you love your life because you know it is full of good things, you can't help but feel good. It also helps to notice what things make you happy so that when you are feeling sad, you can remember them and feel better.

The key here is feeling better. Nobody can go from being clinically depressed to being full of joy right away. The best we can do is to be moving in the right direction, towards better thoughts and better feelings. That way, if we keep moving forward, we will eventually get to a place where we really are full of joy. And then we really will have everything we want.

Tracy Crowe is the webmaster of http://www.reachingmypotential.com