July 2014 Newsletter
Dr. gloria wright
I have to admit working this NeuroPositivity lifestyle has been more of a challenge than I imagined. It’s turned me on my head. I thought of myself as a positive person but when I closely examined what was on my mind, I found a lot of incessant worrying. Just little niggling thoughts scattered about. But – I didn’t realize I was having these little insidious negative thoughts.
Then I had to practice the “stop thinking” technique. Every time a negative thought crossed my mind, I stopped and redirected it to a more positive slant. That old pattern was a stinker to redirect. Watch your thoughts and see what you find.
When I moved on to examine my emotions I recognized that I could have an immediate negative reaction – like in traffic. An instantaneous “What do you think you’re doing?” and pow, there I was. When I went to intentionally exercise the positive emotions (love, joy, gratitude, peace and hope), I couldn’t distinguish much difference in each specific emotion. They all seemed positive, but not distinctive. And I had to get that they weren’t the result of an outside occurrence – but emotions that I could call on at will. As I continued to focus on them, they did start to have some individual flavor.
Then to move on to:
- Immediacy (getting to these emotions immediately)
- Duration (holding the emotion over a period of time)
- Intensity (increasing the emotion over a period of time)
Getting these steps took lots of practice/pulsing! I do believe the Applied Neuroscience Institute teaching that practicing these positive emotions are “significant for brain synchronicity, conservation of psychic energy and evolution to higher state of consciousness and even the elasticity and growth of intelligence.” So I stuck with my intentional rituals. Check what emotions you’re feeling throughout your day.
After maintaining a positive state-of-mind and experiencing positive emotions over 50% of the time, we had the assignment of creating no-limitations-notes for what we wanted/desired. When I heard some refer to 200 notes, I was shocked; I barely had 20. I certainly didn’t think I had weak “want” muscles, but they had been curbed too. After we generated the desires, we were to group them by topic, and turn 5 into 3-month goals which included action steps.
Setting these goals was not the easiest thing to do, but then I had to believe that I would get them and see how I could use my strengths to bring them to fruition. Each day we were to write a plan about how we would use our strengths to assist us in our goals. Well, I have to tell you I didn’t have my strengths on my mind when I started this program. Now I’m supposed to state how I’m going to use my strengths every day? It’s clear to me that I needed a tune-up!!!
How about you? What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What are you believing? What state are you living in? You might need a tune-up too – I’m just saying….
