THE IMPACT OF THINKING
Recently I had the opportunity to start a great role within a business. It wasn’t an easy decision as I was plagued with self-doubt and potential reasons why it wouldn’t work after being on maternity leave. Was I ready? Am I being selfish? What impact will this have on our little family? What might the change mean? Was I up to the challenge with 2 little children?
Without realising it, I was allowing fear to cloud my thoughts, rather than focusing on all the positive things it could bring or what I personally might be able to achieve within this new opportunity.
A course I attended recently gave
me one of those light bulb moments – we have over 50,000+ thoughts a day and fear makes up 80% of those. Primarily it is the fear of not being good enough or being rejected. What an incredibly debilitating, time wasting drain on our minds.
This resonated with me and got me thinking about how important it is to take the time to rework our thoughts and replace some of the negative self-talk that creeps in without us even realising. This stuff is toxic and not helpful and quickly snowballs into that feeling I know that we all experience…unease, stress and distraction. It has a huge influence on my mood and prevents me from being present in my day to day life with my husband and children. I am absolutely certain this impacts my overall ability to thrive.
As a result of this timely reminder, I committed myself to start to work on mindfulness in a very practical sense and start to become more aware of what thoughts I am allowing my mind to ruminate on.
I am actively trying to catch these thoughts and where I need to, reconstruct these by asking myself; is my thinking around this particular scenario helpful, encouraging, solution focused or am limiting myself here, allowing fear of failure or rejection to take over. In many instances I have found, that just by simply taking a couple of minutes to stop and reflect, it is enough to reset and I immediately find that my inner speak is more solution focused and positive. It has helped to de-clutter the useless noise that self-doubt and negative thoughts can have.
A good reminder for me to stop, breath, reflect and reset, filling my mind with the good stuff so I truly can conquer today!
