You Live Most of Your Life Inside of Your Head. Make Sure it is a Nice Place to Be!

Reconnecting with my clients and hearing their summertime stories this past week have taken my sessions with them back to the basics.

Have you seen the first page of my website?

 “When you change the way you think, you change the way you feel. When you change the way you feel, you change the way you act. When you change the way you act, you change your life. “

Sounds so easy, however, speaking to my clients and learning through the past 10 years of my own life, I’ve discovered it isn’t so simple. Retraining our thoughts and beliefs is one of the hardest tasks I have given myself; one I will always commit to. These are just a few key daily tips and techniques:

10 Tips For a Better Head Space:

1. Practice gratitude. Choose a consistent time and say 3 things you are thankful for that day. It is a way to search for the silver lining and recognize there are always things to be grateful for. Include spouses, friends or children in this routine. It allows you to begin your day or go to sleep with a different feel in your head space, clearing the bad thoughts and creating some more peaceful and positive ones.
2. Take gratitude to another level. Add 3 things you’re thankful for that made you sad or angry.  When we acknowledge the pain, anger, sadness or loss, and that things didn’t turn out as expected, it is just as significant and worthy of expression. Those feelings and what they teach us when we do not ignore or push them away, show us how to be complete, with out emotions and to just simply feel.
3. Introduce Affirmations. Put sticky notes on a bathroom mirror to start and end your day and connect with the positive. Reduce the noisy negative in your head. “It’s going to be OK; I’m going to get through this; I’m doing the best that I can”. It is amazing! I started to believe them all, even though I didn’t have a clue how I was going to succeed with some of them in reality.  Believe them and make them simple daily habits to start your day on the right track. Retrain your brain and change your thoughts.
4. Write thoughts down. Identify what you are feeling and why you may be feeling this way, create a thoughts journal; I create thought records with my clients that analyzes the evidence for what they are thinking. Once we evaluate these, I see their moods change. When we write things downs, it fascinates me to return to those pages weeks or years later and see how thoughts have changed. If there are some unpleasant ones lingering around, it is a reminder to focus more on eliminating these ones. Use those notes on smartphones and keep them close and visible. Getting things off your chest can be therapeutic and releasing them shows that you can change your thoughts. If the thought returns, that’s OK, just like clouds in the sky they come and go.
5. Subtract the bad. Eliminate all things and people in your daily settings or routines that bring useless thought into your head. If you can’t eliminate, learn to alter your head space and give low priority to them. Sometimes, you have to change yourself and stop judging people around you so you eliminate the root cause of negativity in your head. Let them go. Simplify trivial day-to-day decisions so your mind has room to think healthier thoughts. If you want more detail, read my website blog: Who is on Your Wagon!
6. Add the positive.  Surround yourself with positive people who can remain positive and test your thinking in a good way; ones who understand you and listen. Read, watch or listen to intellectual things to change your level of thinking. Have challenging conversations with people to upgrade your level of thinking. Add writing to your daily routine and those sticky notes above as reminders. Create a list of goals you would like to accomplish. You will have them as a record and go back to them one day and notice how they may have changed or which ones you have accomplished.
7. Embrace all thoughts.  Be aware and catch yourself thinking and decide if you want to keep that thought or eliminate it, good or bad. If it is a helpful thought or you are learning or smiling from it, continue on. Study your mistakes and moods as your brain cells learn how to get things right by analyzing what went wrong. If you are dwelling on a negative thought, simply look to your right perhaps and find something else to focus on to change the negative to a positive. Focus on a flower beside you, look at the persons shoes next to you. Actively change your thought and create a different space in your head.
8. Rest the Brain. We are always doing something these days even when we take a break; podcasts, air pod phone calls, texts, golf clash or Facebook. Stop it!  The brain needs recovery time. We can get wonderful thoughts by just walking, showering, exercising, cooking or daydreaming. “Studies show that moments of insight often arrive when you’re not aware that you’re thinking of the problem. This is because insights are typically generated by a rush of activity in the brain’s right hemisphere, and the mind is better able to tune in to that hemisphere when it is stress-free”. Give your mind some space. Its needs a vacation to. Learn to daydream more and let the mind make new associations.
9. Avoid thinking under pressure: Learn to shout out to yourself “STOP” when in panic mode or complete shock and take the time to shut off the auto pilot reaction. Look at the situation by asking yourself a few questions and learn to respond in stead of react. I know now to give myself a day before making conclusions or taking actions when caught off guard. It has now become a natural habit and response.
10. You are not your thoughts: Remember thoughts are just thoughts; they are not true.  Observe your thoughts at that moment without any judgement, right or wrong and let them pass.  Accept the thought and don’t get entangled in it. This will allow you to enjoy a moment in a different way, freeing you of negativity and giving you an opportunity to generate a more positive thought.

Summer is over and its time to work hard on ourselves with serious commitment. Sometimes just bringing the positive into focus more than the negative can feel like hard work. It can sound so oversimplified too, but if we can modify our emphasis even just for a short instant to allow good thoughts to be felt, then in that moment our head can become a nice place to be.

Thinking is power and it’s your obligation to use your power for good. Use the power and control to make your life better. I am constantly tossing out longstanding ways of thinking, emptying the corners of my head where self-limiting views are hiding and reminding myself to pull down the screens that do not allow me to see my truth and be the best that I can be!