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Many times we get lost or caught up in the minutia of lifethe push and pull, the yin and yangwith a negative outcome, feeling stressed or rushed with little control, no power and no peace.

Sometimes the minutia of life is more turbulent and thorny than others, however, we can be in controlit is a matter of choice. Remember that feelings follow thoughts. What are you saying to yourself about what you are experiencing? We create what we experience with every thought.

You can choose serenity and feel the delightful pleasure of peace flowing through you like a gentle breeze. If you are still and quiet you will come to a place where you feel safe. You can use this place of safety to create and imagine the limitless possibilities of your experiences.

As the gardener, you can choose which thoughts need to be weeded out and which thoughts you want to stay which will nurture the inner beauty of your mind. As the gardener of your mind you have the responsibility of choosing to weed out the thoughts that can wreck havoc and chaos to your inner and outer experience. If you plant and nurture negative thoughts, they will grow bigger and bigger. Before you realize it your garden is overgrown with weeds that strangle the lovely flowers that were your birthright. If you plant and nurture positive thoughts, they will grow bigger and bigger. What do you want in your garden?

Pay attention to which thoughts you put in your mental garden as you awaken each day. Listen. Listen. Listen carefully. Do you hear yourself bemoan having to get up, go to work or simply get out of bed? Do you say things like–I am having a bad day–and it is only 8:05 a.m.? It isn’t a bad day if it is only 8:05 a.m.–so avoid creating a bad day by what you have experienced so far. You can shake off the traffic, and other negative experiences and create a good day. Do you have pitty parties with your friends or in your head? Do you run all of yesterday’s travail over and over in your mind? Are you focused on thoughts of resentment toward anyone or anything, or are you focused on thoughts which will create a day of magnificence?

You create your reality through your thoughts.

Tune into your mental garden and nurture the positive thoughts and tune out the negative thoughts. Nurture your mental garden with thoughts of love, joy and peace. Breathe in deeply and allow the oxygen to flow through your body. Fill your mental garden with hope and happiness. Keep your mind tuned to endless possibilities. You will be surprised to notice your life on the inside creates your life on the outside.

You have all the gardening tools you need to tend and nurture your mental garden. Remember feelings follow thoughts. Your thoughts are a choicechoose wisely.

Dorothy M. Neddermeyer, PhD, author, international speaker, and inspirational leader empowers people to view life’s challenges as an opportunity for Personal/Professional Growth and Spiritual Awakening. http://www.drdorothy.net

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The other night I was digging around for a long lost collage paper in my craft area with my daughter. We were about to sit down and make our goal posters for 2006. I was so intently focused on hunting down this paper that I wasn’t as focused as I normally am on the conversation my ten-year-old daughter and I were having. I knew I must have said something wrong when she shrilled “MOM!”

I stood straight up and tried to remember the last words I had spoken. I didn’t have much time to wonder because she continued with a startled reprimand.

“MOTHER! You almost doubted yourself! Say you’re sorry to yourself! Say you’re sorry to your brain!”

The context of the conversation came back. We were talking about a trip we wanted to take and I began a statement with “Well, if I.” and that was when she cut me off at the pass. In our house words like “if” aren’t used. We use empowering and affirmative words like “when.”
Why?

Because the first step in accomplishing anything is the belief and determination that you can accomplish it. “If” doesn’t exude a lot of confidence or belief, does it?

The memorable mothering moment came at my daughter’s shock that I had used the word “if.” Her shock affirmed that this must have been one of the few times a non-affirming statement came from my mouth. I have seen her before in my workplace, correcting the “ifs” of employees and it always fills me with pride. This isn’t a steadfast rule that I enforced in the house, but a quality I wanted to exemplify and in turn hoped she would inherit. Not only did she inherit it, she internalized it and has basically become the “Positive Patrol.”

Interestingly, we aren’t all born with “ifs.” When we are little we don’t say, “When I grow up, if I can be President” Instead when we are asked, “What will you be when you grow up?” We announce proudly, “I will be President.” Maybe we haven’t thought about all the barriers, maybe we don’t know what barriers are at that age, regardless we do know what belief is and we have it down to our toes. So where does it go? When do the “whens” turn to “ifs”?

The Internal Critic
Why do we find children so inspirational? Part of it is their innocence but there is much more. The magic within a child lies largely in the fact they are untarnished by worry, blame, guilt and the stress of adult life. When we are around children we remember how to “believe.”

Yet somewhere in our young lives, things begin to change. Our aspirations, dreams and ideas are criticized. When we paint a pink tree and purple sky and an authority figure corrects usletting us know that trees aren’t pink and skies aren’t purple, that little creative voice gets quieter. And after we receive enough of this feedback, we learn to be a critic for ourselves. We learn to second-guess our dreams, doubt our approach, and belittle our efforts. We develop this internal critic that follows us everywhere, and her main ammunition is negativity and guilt. Our internal critic doesn’t believe in much of anythingfor if she did, she would cease to exist.

Eventually we become adults. We often feel a push and pull in our lives. We go from high to low and back again. We bounce between feeling empowered and feeling empty. It becomes easy to see why when you think about having two different messages in your mind. That childlike mind encouraging you to take risks, become more, live more, dream more and then the critic who is reprimanding you for silly ideas, bad odds and wasted time.

So can we find a place where these extreme opposites—critic and child–can co-exist? How long can fire and ice co-exist? Not for long. One characteristic will have to dominate. Unfortunately it is often the critic, because she is louder, obnoxious, and she has undermined you for so long, that you may have begun to undermine yourself. The “good days” are the days where something prompts you back to that childlike state of seeing the good in everything, finding wonder in the simple, and magic in the moment. The bad days are the days the critic speaks so loudly that the child hides.

What do we do?

So what do we do with this critic we didn’t invite and certainly don’t want to entertain? We isolate her and we isolate her behavior. We learn to speak up, grow stronger and we refuse to let her or her attitude sit at our table. And we do that through vigilance. We quit listening to her and when we quit, she starves because she needs worry, guilt, and insecurity to survive.

In order to “battle back” we have to start listening to ourselves. Both the words we say and the thoughts we think. When we find ourselves thinking in a self-critical way, we shout as loud as my daughter did. Then we apologize to ourselves (and our brain, as Sammy says) and we put a positive message in the place of the negative.

Positive Inspirations

To come full circle, what my daughter and I had sat down to do that night was create goal posters for 2006. A goal poster is a visual summary of what you want to create in your life and words and images that inspire you to be your best. Constant visual reminders help us remain focused. I make a goal poster each year. In the Goal Group I am teaching we are making a goal poster each quarter to reinforce our goals. I am working on creating an internet page for your viewing to inspire you to create your own goal poster. I will have this done by next week and include a link in the Challenge Weekly.

We can also use affirmations and positive statements. If you have not already subscribed to my free Good Morning service, you can do so by clicking here. Each day includes an affirmation. I also have affirmation cards that you can carry with you. You can order those here. Or you can make your own. My best friend and I have decided to spend some time making an affirmation deck for ourselves this year.

Remember, in the most basic sense, the mind acts like a computer. Everything we think or say is the “data” it uses. When we think negatively and talk negatively, it is like downloading a virus or having a corrupted file. We can’t run at our best. To have our “computer” perform, we have to feed it good and solid information. To have our life be all it can be we have to feed our soul the same.

Your Weekly Challenge:

Program the Positive

Take a look at the affirmation cards and use them as inspiration to create a deck of your own or order a set for yourself. Read the Good Morning emails and record the affirmations in your Catch-All Notebook. Be vigilant and identify the critic throughout your day and use positive programming to replace her negative messages.

Brook Noel is the creator of the best-selling 70 Day Life Makeover Program for Women .. The Change Your Life Challenge. http://www.changeyourlifechallenge.com
This program has helped thousands of women take control of their home, finances, relationships, clutter, time-managmenet and more.

She is the author of 19 books and maintains three free newsletters. The Daily Rush is devoted to quick and easy recipes; Good Morning! is a daily newsletter to get your day off to a great start and The Challenge Weekly offers a personal challenge for self-improvement each week. To sign up for these free newsletters please visit http://www.changeyourlifechallenge.com/news.htm

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No; I’m not hearing voicesvery much, at least. However, I do have a question for you: How do you manage that little voice inside your head? Now if you’re thinking, “What little voice is he talking about?” that would be the little voice right there!

You know, that voice that tries to convince you that something is too hard, or too painful, or too embarrassing or too risky. Yes, the same voice that might even try to tell you that you’re not good enough, that other people don’t like you or that you won’t ever amount to anything. Your voice might even go as far as trying to convince that you’re not even worthy of taking up space or having a voice, and that you are just a loser at the core.

That one voice has been THE most destructive force that I have encountered in working with people over the last 20 years. I’ve seen it make many beautiful people think that they were ugly, smart people think that they were dumb and creative people think that all their creative expression was a joke.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had quite enough of that voice. It’s time to fight back.

And the warfare you engage in with your little voice is quite simpleas long as you keep it simple. When you hear your little voice trying to convince you of any of the limiting beliefs or distortions like the ones listed above, you can simply respond to it by saying: “Thank you for sharing.”

No inner power struggles, no calling yourself stupid for thinking that and no denial of what is really going on. Just those 4 simple words: “Thank you for sharing.”

Now let’s suppose that you had a really stubborn inner voice and it get kept coming back after your self-intervention. Well, let me ask you this: If you have to say “Thank you for sharing”
100 times in a day, isn’t that better than continually hearing that chatter get more and more powerful and destructive?

And besides, this is the beginning of you retraining your brain. That’s right; you can actually reprogram your brain to respond differently. It’s called conditioning and it works just the same way that Pavlov’s dog responded in the ever famous experiment that started Pavlov’s theory.

Keep saying “Thank you for sharing.” After a while it will even start to seem funny. In fact, after a while you might even find your self saying, “Hi, it’s you again. Have a seat and I’ll listen to you when I’m done living.”

And just in case you were wondering; that is YOUR voice that you’re hearing. Don’t you think it’s a good time to just do a little redirection?

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Ken Donaldson has been based in Tampa Bay offering counseling, coaching, and educational programs since 1987. His REALationship Coaching programs empower people to have more successful lives, businesses and relationships by building a powerful relationship with themselves first. Visit his website at http://www.REALationshipCoach.com for more information and sign-up his free e-program Illuminations and Sparks of Brilliance. Ken is also the author of the upcoming book Marry YourSelf First!

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