I've been really practicing, even more than ever, on catching my negative thoughts and challenging them instead of continuing to buy into them. I've done that my whole life and have always felt like a dark cloud hanging over me consistently.
I had an experience the other day in which I automatically reacted in my usual negative habitual way and I actually "caught myself" and was able to step outside myself long enough to observe myself and my behavior just as if it were someone else observing me. I saw some things in myself that would seem like some little kid acting out in a tantrum and realized that reacting the way I did is only a reflection of my inner child coming out and acting out of fear even though anger was what you saw.
I continued to analyze my behavior and where it stems from and came upon some pretty interesting ideas.
I was very proud of myself for doing this. I felt myself "allowing my emotions" and choosing to love and accept myself along with my faults but at the same time choosing to step out of the picture and see it from a different angle. I cannot begin to tell you how very enlightening that is and also exciting.
I made an agreement with myself that for every difficult issue/thought/event that happens that I am open and willing to make it into a challenge instead of a negative.
Gosh, the difference it makes in how I feel when I do that. Sometimes I think that its all hocus pocus stuff, this stuff that I learn, but whenever I try it and actually put it into action I "see" that it really does work. The hard part is just getting myself to actually put it into motion which I don't always do. But I am finding that it is becoming more and more fun and challenging to look at myself this way. This is a very different way for me.
I look back at my life in the past and begin feeling so thankful that I've made the positive changes I have. I guess something just clicked with me with my divorce that caused me to wake up to how my life was going and realized it wasn't going to ever be any different unless I made the decision to make changes in myself. I look back and see this so clearly now. I used to think it was everyone else and just life that was causing all this for me. Now I see that it was all up to me on which way my life was going to go.
And its still up to me which way I want to go now.
There are days that I get horribly depressed with sadness about my past and I get to feeling lonely and a feeling of being dead to life. It then creates more of a doom and gloom to where I have no motivation to get up and do anything.
After a while when I finally see that its up to me to change it, just taking one little step in any direction seems to get the ball rolling for me, just one little change or tweaking a thought changes how I feel immediately. Its never easy when I'm in that state of mind but I have proved to myself that it "is" possible.
