Twenty years of propaganda has an impact. We come to believe that cravings are good for us, a part of normal life. No point fighting them. It’s time to strip away the mask and see the raw ugliness hidden below. Cravings are powerful forces leading us to death and destruction.
To overcome cravings, you need to run an anti-brainwashing program to clean out the junk from childhood. Not only was your mind filled with reading, writing and arithmetic, but mind-washing thoughts as well, skillfully placed by the mentors of negativity. Like a computer virus, they infect your life by infecting your thinking.
With cult-like force, they infiltrated the education system. Your teacher, your guidance counselor, or your school janitor may have been one of them. Even your parents may have fallen under the spell.
The only way to detect this hideous fraternity is by their common language. If you say, “it’s a beautiful day,” they respond with, “what’s good about it?” You mention singing birds. They complain about bird poop. You mention sunshine; they grimly suggest skin cancer. Every word carries the dark force of criticism, fear and complaint. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is cherished. Nothing has value.
They have stubbornly made a decision to think the worst. You can’t change that, but you can defend yourself against the onslaught of these malignant thoughts.
It is time to put the brakes on defeatist thinking and alter your mental dialogue.
Evaluate what you are thinking. Are your thoughts inspiring, uplifting and encouraging or a stewing cauldron of worry, fear and doubt? Watch your thoughts. (No converter required.) Is your brain signal positive or negative? You will quickly realize how the negative thoughts have a far greater impact than the positive thoughts. If the thoughts you are thinking are negative, it’s time to replace them with positive, uplifting, warm, fuzzy, nice thoughts.
It’s not easy. You can start out encouraging yourself and end up thinking weird and depressing thoughts. You may think a positive thought like “It’s all going to work out.” And there is this depressing response saying, “no it’s not, my life is falling apart.” It is here that the battle is fought. Stop fighting and negativity wins because you have decided to believe it. You have to fight with truth, repeating the uplifting thought until you believe.
The desire for comfort carries us on the path of least resistance. It is the easy way out. Who wants to swim upstream, when we can go with the flow? But the flow is going downhill to end in a stagnant cesspool of fear, worry and obsession. Going with the flow has a pay-off; we are doing something that is easy. And if we don’t, we have to face our fear. It is easier to be consumed with worry than to do something constructive. You need to strive against the current of negative thinking, facing its power. It may feel like a raging current but the strength will come. Success is upstream, a place of freedom, joy and hope. It is the place we want to be.
Negative thoughts are hard to fight. They are like that floating pink elephant. The more we try not to think of them, the more they barge into our thinking. The solution is to deflect obsession to become encouraging thoughts. We have to re-channel the energy of obsessive, fear-ridden thoughts toward confidence-building thoughts.
Hi
Most change comes through pain and restriction. But it is better to change through wisdom and self-control.