Written by Anthony Meindl
Negative thoughts never serve you.
Ever.
They continue to keep you locked in the prison of the left brain’s neural grooves that give you zero access to anything more than additional negative thoughts. Eeeeek.
When that feedback loop happens, you must cut the circuitry in order to access anything else.
How you do that is simple.
1). Stop the thought. Just stop it. The only reason why it feels so pervasive is because it’s the thought you most often think of yourself. But just because we think these things doesn’t make them true.
2). Drop the thought. Just drop it. It doesn’t serve you (except to keep you stuck). So just drop it. You can do that by mentally affirming a new statement of truth or if you’re having a particularly hard time, get physical. (Yes! Olivia Newton John sang about it in the 80′s!) Go for a walk. Get out of your normal routine. Stop what you’re doing and engage your body. Just recalibrate by doing anything else rather than perpetuating that negative thought.
3). Literally roll with a better-feeling thought. We so often misinterpret the things that occur in our daily lives, that if you could just find a new way of interpreting something that happened to you, you’d start to feel better about the situation. Period. Another (possibly truthful) explanation of what did or didn’t occur gives you access to a better feeling.
Yes, it still may be a fantasy.
But fantasies are a lot more fun to conjure than the nightmare scenarios we create in our minds everyday (most of which are untrue and most of which never occur).
It’s not always easy to transform our thoughts because they’ve become habituated over time and use. But having the awareness that you’re saying things to yourself that don’t make you feel good is the first step. Without that awareness, your thoughts run on autopilot.
And to assist you on your journey, you’re going to try a new piece of homework.
This week, live your life (speak it, talk about it with friends, create possibilities from it) “AS IF.”
The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between the images and thoughts we tell it from actual reality. So start telling your story the way you want your story to actualize.
Call your friend and speak about your life in superlatives AS IF it’s already happening. (Because at one level, it is. If you can think it and dream it, then you actually already have the substance to make that thing happen. Images and thoughts create causality. “Reality” is an extension of the energy and thoughts we think tied to a vision.)
So if you’re working on set with Ryan Gosling (!) and going to dinner with Ryan Gosling (!) and Ryan Gosling is asking you to marry him (!) then talk about it AS IF.
It doesn’t matter that you’ve never met Ryan Gosling!
It also doesn’t matter if the specifics of these images never emerge.
The Universe will take care of the specifics. Always. And it never looks like the way we think it’s going to look.
So it’s not really about Ryan Gosling. It’s about the feelings you feel when you start to imagine yourself the way you always thought you could be: happy, fulfilled, excited, passionate, joyous, sexy, dynamic, loved.
As you engage in the world in this more active way (even if at first, its imaginary), you’ll begin to start asking yourself more penetrating questions.
Like, “Why don’t I think I could be with someone like Ryan Gosling?”
Like, “Why don’t I believe I should be doing films with Ryan Gosling?”
Like, “Why wouldn’t someone like Ryan Gosling ask me to marry him?”
The more you energetically move in the direction of what you’re wanting through feeling, the more you will begin to start asking for things you really believe you can achieve.
And you’ll also wonder why you never thought you could have them in the first place.
Anthony Meindl is an award-winning writer, producer, director and actor whose first feature screenplay, THE WONDER GIRLS, was the Grand Prize Winning Feature Screenplay in the Slamdance Film Festival Screenplay Competition in 2007. Prior to this accomplishment, Meindl was responsible for the production of an array of award-winning projects. His background in acting, training, and performance has afforded him the opportunity to create what has become a thriving artist community in Los Angeles.
Check out Anthony’s book, At Left Brain, Right Turn
