Welcome back to our brand new guided interactive series – How to Flourish! If you’re joining us for the first time, make sure to go back and check out the previous week’s articles so you don’t miss a thing.

This week we’re talking about a very popular topic, Thought and Mindset Work. We’re going to cover what you need to know about taking control of negative thought patterns and beliefs. Then we’ll move on to how to shift your negative thoughts to positive ones. And we’ll share a simple three part process you can follow to make this more tangible!

How to use this guide: 

• For the sections entitled “questions” or “practice,” you can approach these a few different ways. Just allow your thoughts to flow in a “brain dump” style journaling session, or using voice notes. Feel free to keep these to reflect later, or even delete them once the thoughts are out of your head! You can also work through these questions with a friend or partner. 
• It may be helpful to do this work in short sessions daily or a few times per week. Get comfortable, make a cup of tea or coffee. Put on a soothing playlist or enjoy some quiet time. 
• You can also feel grounded by doing some deep breathing before you get started! An easy exercise to begin with is inhaling for 4 and exhaling for 6, pretending like you are blowing out through a straw. This will help you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, aka the “rest, digest, recover” part.

Thought and Mindset Work

Taking Control of Negative Thought Patterns and Beliefs

Changing your thinking patterns and beliefs can feel overwhelming, especially because this area can feel very abstract. The first thing to keep in mind is that changing your thoughts and beliefs is like changing any other habit. And why is that? Because thoughts themselves are habits! So if you believe that you can change your body by what you eat and how you move, let it sink in that changing your thoughts gets to be the same. Neuroscience also tells us that even as adults, you can still rewire your brain!

Your brain is being shaped and molded constantly by everything you experience. So, a great place to start when you want to change your thoughts is looking at what you take in, like we did in part 2 with the mental detox exercise. Now, let’s go inward.

3 Steps to Reprogram Your Thoughts

We’re going to follow a 3 step process to examine our thoughts and beliefs on a conscious and subconscious level, and begin to reprogram them. Realizing you have the power to do this comes first! It’s also helpful to think about having a relationship with your thoughts and beliefs, and seeing it from that perspective.

1 – Becoming aware

The first part of this process is raising your awareness about your thoughts and beliefs. Take an inventory  and ask yourself the following questions.

• What are the things you regularly think about? 
• Thoughts you commonly have? 
• What do you believe about yourself? 
• How long have you been thinking some of these thoughts? 
• Where did they come from? 
• Are they beliefs that started a long time ago, maybe even in childhood? 
• Are they things that someone in your family used to repeat over and over? 
• Are they things you’ve just been used to hearing?

2 – Connecting

Next, it’s time to connect the dots. Let’s go deeper and see how your thoughts and beliefs affect your current reality. Take your time with this. See what insights you have that maybe you weren’t expecting.

• What effect do these thoughts and beliefs have on you? 
• How do they impact your life? 
• How might they affect your emotions? 
• What effects do they have on your actions, or inactions?

3 – Choosing

Your thoughts don’t define who you are as a person. Some of them may feel supportive to who you are and want to be, while you can recognize that others definitely do not. What you might also notice is that some of your thoughts you’re carrying from others, and maybe you’ve been carrying them for a long time.

• Which thoughts and beliefs will help you keep going? 
• What would it feel like to choose the thoughts you want to keep around? 
• And let go of the ones you don’t want any longer?

Feel free to take some time with this exercise. You may want to journal it out and just let your thoughts flow. This is a great way to tap into your subconscious thoughts that you may not be aware of and see the impact they’re having.

Shifting Focus to Positive Thoughts

Now that you’re aware of your thoughts as a whole and you’ve begun the process of choosing which to keep and what relationship you want to have, let’s talk about what to do when the negative thoughts pop back up. We can call this empowered thinking – a combination of curiosity and thought replacement.

Empowered Thinking

Since you’ve raised your awareness, now when a negative thought comes up, you’ll be primed to notice it more quickly. When you notice it, first remember that you have a choice to let it stick around or not. You can acknowledge it, and then decide that it doesn’t need to be there. Next, you can choose to replace it with a neutral or positive thought instead.

A Helpful Reframe

We love this explanation – that “no thought is free” – they can cost you your time, money, energy, health, and happiness. So when negative thoughts pop up, remember that they’re not free!

You have created a new relationship with your thoughts, you’re empowered, and you can choose what happens when they pop up. As you create this new habit of awareness, acknowledging, and replacing, you’ll notice over time they will pop up less and less. Why? You’re literally rewiring and training your brain every time you do this!

Check out another resource for you about doing the “Inner Work”

What is the “Inner Work” Anyway?

And that’s part 4! We hope you enjoy taking time for your own self discovery as well as the homework assignments and the resources.

Next Steps

Feel free to reach out to us via email, instagram (or comment below!) with any insights, questions, or breakthroughs! We would love to hear what you love and what you’d like to see more of.

Come back next week for Part 5 of our interactive Flourishing series! Next week we’re talk all things Abundance Mindset, Generosity, and Gratitude.

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Looking for more personalized support on this journey? Want to go deeper? As we always say, it may be called “the inner work,” but that doesn’t mean you’re meant to do it alone. We would be honored to be your guides! Book a free session with either of us here. It may be the most valuable thing you do to move forward in your personal development journey!