Processes to Enhance Your Journey (Magical Living Series, Post 4)
So, as I’ve been blogging about the magic back into your life, about creating the life you want, I’ve been hearing, “but how?” I say, focus on what you want instead of on what you have. I say, ignore the bad and make a huge fuss over the good. I say, release the past and look only at the future. I say, ignore reality unless it’s the reality you want. But my readers want to know how to do those things. Because really, our old patterns of thought are habits. Habits are actual grooves in our brains, neural pathways that get deeper and deeper the more often we travel them. And soon it’s not a path, it’s a rut. It takes some powerful tools to get ourselves out of our old ruts, and consistent, persistent, practice to create new ruts. Ruts we want to travel.
I have found some methods that actually trick our brains into helping us do just that, and I’m going to share those processes with you now. You won’t have time to do all of them every day, nor should you. Life is meant to be lived. But these processes can help you to automatically become a more positive person, and that’s going to tip the scales in just the way you need them tipped.
So here we go.
Process 1: The Gratitude Challenge
Get a nice journal. (Many of my suggestions will begin with “get a nice journal.” That’s because I really love beautiful blank books.)
When you get up in the morning, open to page 1 of your journal, write the numerals 1-5 down the left hand side of the page, leaving several spaces between each one. (Use pencil, a nice freshly sharpened one, which is a rare pleasure, so you can erase and re-arrange later if you need more room.)
Now set it aside, and go about your day, but go about it knowing that you have to find 5 positive things, wonderful things to write down in those 5 spaces before you go to sleep.
Repeat this process every day for a week.
Do it again for a second week, only this time, list 10 things each day. Try never to repeat the same thing twice.
(This is my favorite journal: Click the link to check out Pandora’s Box where I bought it! No, I don’t get a cut, or even know the artist personally, but I love her work.)
This works because without you quite knowing it, you are training your mind to look for positive things. After all, you have a journal to fill. The act of looking for positive things will result in positive things showing up for you. When you start finding them, you’ll start expecting to see more of them. Expecting positive things causes you to emit a signal that calls them to you. You can’t fake this. But the simple fact that you have this list to fill will be enough to set it into motion. And it will snowball. I dare you to try it.