As a professional therapist for over 25 years, I discovered a unique approach to real happiness that has literally changed the course of my life.
I discovered that most of us have been taught to depend upon someone or something outside of ourselves to be happy and as you and I both know, it doesn’t work. It’s important for you to know that real happiness is not the kind you get from the right relationship partner, the right lifestyle, education, career, friends, house, car, or even a bottle of alcohol or handful of pills. It comes from inside of YOU! But who knew that?
Here’s an exercise from my book Good With Me that can produce quick changes in your life:
Practice changing negative stress-producing thoughts into positive, calming thoughts. Pick a situation in which you would normally become stressed. Identify the type of thoughts you would normally have in that situation. Can you identify the stress-producing thoughts? Once you have identified the stress-producing thoughts, change them to positive, calming thoughts.
Create your own personal positive, calming words for this situation and then repeat them over and over again. This is likely to feel strange, even uncomfortable at first, because you are used to feeling stressed out. You might not even believe it is possible to change your stress-producing thoughts to positive, calming thoughts. If and when this happens, just notice that you are uncomfortable and keep on thinking positive, calming thoughts about the situation.
Speak the words out loud. Continue this process until you are able to get past your discomfort and your own negative stress producing thoughts. Do you know anyone in your life that could benefit from this post? Please share it with them!
