By now, you know that your thoughts influence your feelings, and your feelings influence your behaviors, which affect your thoughts. And so it goes, around and around, for you and everyone else. Before you know it, a few decades slip by, and you become the dreaded “set in your ways.”
If things have been going swimmingly for you, it is because you’ve made peace with this cycle and learned how to use it to your advantage. It takes effort for the rest of us mortals, and inevitable screwups are part of the human experience.
What’s been stopping you from achieving what you want to achieve? It’s not just your thoughts, but you’re making it harder for yourself if you don’t turn your thinking around.
It’s fear.
You’re afraid of any number of things projected with your mind’s eye, and if you think a good leader can’t be afraid, you’re sabotaging yourself. A good leader — great leaders, acknowledge their fears and then proceed.
If you want to make progress, there’s going to be disruption. It’s okay. You’re not striving for stagnation.
The thoughts you give safe harbor to are preventing you from leaving port.
Begin to pay attention to what you’re thinking and then be a little kinder to yourself. You don’t have to fake positive, happy talk; in fact, you shouldn’t. What you want to do, though, is neutralize the negativity. Catch yourself during your inner monologue and challenge your assertions.
You could change your behaviors, but your thirst for instant gratification makes that frustrating.
You could change your feelings, but when you’re in the thick of something, it can feel like you need to perform a Jedi mind trick to get back on track. That’s exhausting.
You can change your thoughts in an instant. Go ahead and try it. You have thousands of opportunities each day. Turn a few thoughts that don’t serve you into ones that do. A little bit every day is a lot over time.
Also published on Medium.