This article is a excerpt from the highly acclaimed book "It's Your Turn! The Success Blueprint for the Dance Studio Owner
The sun never felt warmer or more nourishing. You can literally feel it healing you, melting away the stress of life as you look at the shore line of this more than pristine beach. The sky is the most vivid blue you've ever seen. The water is literally shimmering in the sun, the green-blue color of which has never been more tempting. The sound of the waves rushing to the shore is so relaxing, you wish you could be here always. Just then lunch is brought to you. Food never looked and tasted more appealing. Each mouthwatering bite is a true gastronomic experience unlike any other you've ever had before. "Where did they find fruit this juicy?" you ask yourself. You bite into a pineapple that is so sweet, the juice just flows. It's as if you are drinking a full glass of the freshest pineapple juice you've ever tasted. Someone from the resort staff finds you on the secluded beach where you've been lounging the last four hours and tells you that soon it will be time for your healing massage. You hear yourself saying, "It just doesn't get any better than this. This is true paradise. I never want to leave. I've never been happier, and it's all because- " Just then a jarring noise, like the loudest alarm you've ever heard, sounds. The noise seems to shatter the picture of the idyllic setting you've been experiencing. The alarm, now at ear-deafening pitch, is not going away and is only getting louder and more intrusive. Suddenly you feel yourself slipping, losing the picture of the paradise that was yours. Your eyes open rather suddenly, only to reveal that the alarm right by your bed is beckoning you to turn it off, get up, get out of bed to start another day.
You're back. It was nothing but a dream. What a supreme letdown! Regrettably, your thoughts turn away from the peace that you experienced in that far-away place and focus on what you have to face today at the studio. All at once, your thoughts take a turn for the worse. You can feel your body tighten, as if you buffer yourself from the stress and negativity you are sure will once again be a part of your day. How you wish you could stay in bed and not go anywhere! But duty calls, so you rise and face yourself in the mirror-much like facing the negativity that you think the day will surely bring at work.
Does this scenario sound somewhat familiar to you? How often are we reluctant to face the day ahead of us? Contrary to popular belief, there's nothing wrong with foreboding thoughts of what the day might bring. But here's the question: How often do you think about what might be, what might occur, before it actually happens? Even better, do things happen later in your day just as you thought they would when you were driving to work? Scary isn't it? Sometimes things really end up exactly as we expected. We can be quite powerful when we want to be. Having creative and suggestive powers such as this can also work against us if we don't correctly use what we've been given.
Here's something I'd like you to be aware of on an ongoing basis: if you wake up with negative thoughts concerning what might happen during the coming day, could it be that most of your day turns out to be negative? If you haven't experienced this rather interesting phenomenon yet, suffice it to say that this is often the case. Sometimes we can sabotage occurrences in our immediate future by thinking negative thoughts in our conscious present. What you think about on your way to work has a direct influence and effect on what happens during your day at work-nothing more, nothing less.
Many believe that consciousness is directly connected to creation. With this in mind, let's follow a thought from inception to creation.
1. BAM! The thought is created. You think of something, and it becomes a thought in your mind.
2. The thought you created travels from your mind to the conscious, active and energetic part of who you are. It now joins a sea of other thoughts you've previously created.
3. Once the thought becomes conscious, it then is inserted somewhere into a big file box known as your future.
4. The thought's day and time finally come, and so out of the file box it goes, soon to become a reality.
All of this may be well and good, but what happens if, on your way to work, you can't seem to stop thinking about the possible negative things that might occur later in your day? You must then work at changing negative and unproductive thoughts into positive ones. The process is easy and takes very little time to achieve.
Say you notice yourself thinking about the staff meeting you will have in just two hours. Even though you have no idea of how things will really turn out, you are almost certain that fireworks will fly, and that the result of the meeting will almost definitely be a huge negative. Think about this: how could you possibly know that in advance? Our minds are interesting things, and it's actually quite common to think fear and negativity into events that haven't occurred yet. The important thing to remember is that when you find yourself thinking negatively of a future event, don't get attached to it. Let it go. Just let the thought occur and then move on. Just let it go. It's when we attach ourselves to negative thoughts that they have a good chance of manifesting. You have the possibility of literally becoming what it is you think about. You can literally wear and become the negativity you once thought about like clothes straight out of your closet. Why? Because what we choose to believe, we all too often receive. It's as simple as that.
You may not be able to change a situation, but you CAN change the way you think about, feel and react to it. When you change the way you think about a situation, the outcome of that situation can change, as well.
Action Plan!
Here's how to turn things around. If you, too, find yourself thinking negative thoughts that you feel powerless to change, big or small, don't lose hope-here's what you can do:
Step 1 - Identify the negative thought, and acknowledge it.
Step 2 - Write a positive version of your original negative thought.
Step 3 - Say the new statement and belief out loud as many times as you can, and FEEL the changes as if they are already in the here and now
That last part might be the hardest thing for you to do. Why? Because the mind still wants to see things as they are perceived to be in the present. Your mind doesn't want to consider change until things have physically changed, until the event has actually happened. What I'm asking you to do is to change things before they physically occur. That's why you need to take the situation into your own hands and change it now. You bring the future into the present by changing negatives into positives.
This Action Plan is something that's very easy to do before you go to bed each night or leave for work. Take the time to do this, and watch how things will change for the better. It's not rocket science, but it is something that takes will and effort. Like the old Nike slogan says, "Just do it." Not only will your entire energy change for the better, people and situations throughout the day also will take an amazing turn to the positive, right before your very eyes. But you have to put the effort into creating the thought change, before the actual event occurs. You can do this! If you don't take the time to do this for yourself, no one else will.