What do you expect for the rest of your life?

We make our expectations come true.

After all you have been through and all you have learned, what are your expectations for the rest of your life?

Change your expectations, change your life.

How old do you feel?

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?” – Satchel Paige

Well, what do you say?

Think better than the average guy

Your brain is 2% of your body weight and takes 20% of the energy (20 watts of power).

So you should eat well, sleep well, and take care of your body so you can think better than the average guy.

Better thinkers win.

"But, will I encounter hardship?"

Of course.  It’s not whether you get obstacles or hardships, it’s how you handle them.

Control the controllables.

Think clearly and make a plan.

Focus on the next step.

Keep moving.

Having a pity party?

Visit a burn unit, nursing home or bad neighborhood.

Gone!

Become a threat

Become a threat to your excuses and old habits.

Become a threat to your lazy brain that doesn’t want to do any new thinking. 

The new you threatens the old you?  Perfect.  

Let’s confront it, and then release it…and finally put the old self to rest.

Break new ground

You are here to do something you have not done before.

What is it?

Three words – who would you like to be?

What three words would you like to be more of?

Excited?  Creative?  Open? Loving?  Grateful?  Patient? Present? Bold?  Powerful?  Courageous?

Go ahead and pick three words that the new and better version of you will be.

Now write them down on a post-it note and put them on your bathroom mirror, and in your workplace where you will see them often.  Say them aloud several times a day.  “I am __________.  I am _________. I am _________.”  

Reprogram your hardware, and be you 2.0.

Action!

Actions can reprogram your brain too.  Stand up and take action.  Do the thing you fear.  Get started.  Move your body.  Take the first step.  Do it.  

Just as thoughts can reprogram your brain, so can action.  Repeated action conditions your brain into new beliefs and new repeated thoughts.

I know people who have said they don’t like someone for years.  Then one day they bump into them and have a talk, and boom, two years of negative self-talk gone.  Couldn’t they have called them or visited them when it started with the intention to understand and appreciate their good qualities and avoided all those years of crappy thoughts?

If you have been procrastinating doing something you think you hate now or are not good at, and just get started or get a bit of instruction on – boom, procrastination and repeated thoughts gone!  Walk around the block and then lift a five-pound weight ten times and boom – you workout!  That’s who you are!

Motion creates emotion and changes your recurring thoughts.  Take action!

Reprogramming YOU

To reprogram ourselves from thoughts that are not helpful to ones that are, we can use the same technique that got us here in the first place.  Repetition.

We can’t get rid of a thought – we can only overwrite it with a new thought about that subject.

So check in often – How am I thinking right now.? What automatic program is running in the background or foreground that is negative?  Overwrite it by saying (aloud if you have to) the new positive thought that is the opposite or more helpful than the old one.  

Keep doing it.  Over and over again, even if it’s hard to believe at first.  Intentional self-talk.  You don’t have to believe it at first.  Visualize the outcome or performance you want, vividly, and emotionally.

If you do not have a mental disorder, you have the extreme power to do this.  

Why not try?  Set up your environment to do it three times a day.  Set an alarm on your phone, 3x a day.  Check-in.  Ask.  Assert your intentions.  Overwrite the thoughts with what you want and know will be helpful.  DO not allow the negative thoughts to run your show automatically.

More tomorrow…