Indulging In The Negative

Yesterday after I left the Gym, I was heading home on my bike and ran into a recent client at our treatment program. She is still clean and sober and things are looking up for her. She has a job and her parents are going to buy an investment property in Boulder and rent it to her. She was smiling when she shared this but then she said, “I don’t want to sabotage this.” She shared she is afraid her old pattern will resurface. That pattern she shared was when things are going well, she does something to sabotage it.

Here I am straddling my bike on the side of the road trying to intervene in her thinking. She is affirming her sabotage skills and I am encouraging her to think about things continuing to work out well for her. Her thinking, her habitual sense of the world is colored hopefully not tainted by her mind. If she fully believes she will negate the positive outcomes, she will. She cannot afford to be run by a negative and limiting mind because it will sabotage her life. This is indulging in the negative.

The alternative is clear to me as an observer and therapist. She must focus on what is going well and appreciate the positive outcomes. That is the reality of her life now. The sabotage is not real unless she gives in energy by her thoughts. What we focus on grows larger or more charged.

I know of others who spend their days feeling overwhelmed, upset, worried, and stuck. These thoughts are just thoughts and of course if they focus on the negative their results will be negative. That too is indulging in the negative. Thoughts are just thoughts and they only have the meaning we give them. So yes we can change our thoughts and change the outcomes of our lives.

The path to inner peace and to creating the world we desire must be positive, hopeful and with an open heart. Any other mindset will be limiting and if we allow the mind to journey more than a step or two in the negative then we are indulging in what will never create the results we want.

Life is entirely too short to indulge in worry, in fear, in blame, in complaining, in poor me, in anger, in hate or in any other negative emotions. If we choose to instead hang out in the positive, in hope, in love, in compassion, in openness, in joy, in consciousness, in appreciation and other optimistic states then life will be a wonderful journey. Which will it be?

I will share more on ways to keep the mind working in our favor this week.