Every good self-development program teaches the importance of maintaining a positive perspective. But when you first begin to practice focusing on the good that you desire, chances are you’ll run smack into a stream of murky thoughts and images rising from some bedeviled corner of your mind. They take the shape of doubts, fears, pictures of future failures, and memories of failures from the past. And like the bogeymen small children see lurking in nighttime shadows, the negative images produce a lot of unfounded fears.

“Am I canceling out all the positive images I’m trying to create?” students will ask. Or they’ll say that they just can’t maintain their positive thoughts and ask if they’re hopeless cases. The happy answer to both questions is a big, resounding ‘No!’ For many reasons, positive images of the good you desire have enormously more power than your doubts and fears. And the fact that everybody faces the same challenge means the backlash of negative thoughts is normal.

More than that, the backlash is a kind of gift, to be welcomed. What you’re actually seeing are patterns of thought and layers of belief that were formerly invisible to you. Instead of fearing or fighting them, realize they’re simply showing you aspects of yourself that you have now chosen to change. They’re a kind of snapshot of the images that ruled you without your awareness up until now. They aren’t you; they’re only habits of thought that you can discard now that you see them as the unserving patterns that they are.

To lessen their appearance requires only two things. First, rather than judging yourself for producing them, just acknowledge their content as thoughts you no longer wish to entertain. Look at them with curiosity and detachment, as if you’re looking at an old photo of yourself that you never saw before. If you feel guilty about the content for any reason, forgive yourself with all the love and compassion you can summon. You didn’t choose the negative viewpoint; you acquired it. Because you’re aware of it now, you’re free of its power to unconsciously direct your choices.

Secondly, rather than attempting to analyze the negative thought, belief or image and trying to ferret out its cause, simply refocus on the thoughts you prefer in its place. The more frequently you do this, the faster your preferred thoughts and images will become your new ‘normal’—and your new reality.

The process of change is like the process of dying cloth a different color. When you first dip it in the dye bath, the cloth takes on a pale tint of the new shade. But every time you wash it in the new color, more of the new hue remains. Finally, all its fibers are fully and permanently transformed.

Don’t be concerned that the colors of your old thoughts bleed through for awhile. Just keep dipping into your new hues. Before you know it, you and your world will be beautifully transformed.

Susan K. Minarik
www.thetomorrowgame.com