There’s a cause-and-effect relationship between what’s in your mind and what’s happening in your life right now. That is, what’s in your mind becomes what’s in your life.
The formula is simple: How you feel about yourself and what you say to yourself are two of the greatest forces to influence your future. Think about it. If you believe you’re incompetent at your job, you’re not going to ask for a raise. If you believe you’re overweight, you’re not going to throw yourself into the dating pool. If you think you’re a lousy mother, you’re not going to believe your partner when they say that you’re an excellent mother. And if you don’t think you’re smart enough, you’ll stay at work too late trying to prove that you are.
I speak from experience on that last one.
This is how the world works: the actions you take in life come from images in your mind. Guess who puts those images in there. Yup. No one has access to, or control over, what happens in your mind except for you. You’re in charge of your thoughts, and your thoughts create the reality in front of you. Emerson said it best when he said that you become what you think about all day long.
So, what do you think about all day? And for that matter, what do you say all day too? For too many years of my life, I stored endless negative images of myself in my mind. And their drumbeat was always the same: I wasn’t smart enough, patient enough, kind enough, pretty enough, wife enough, sister enough, daughter enough, or mom enough. Sure enough, the circumstances of my life directly reflected those beliefs.
I worked too much, took on too much, tried too hard, ate too much, drank too much, didn’t work out enough, didn’t cook enough, wasn’t home enough. It wasn’t pretty. Trust me (Or just ask my husband).
I’ve been studying mothers’ lives for decades, and the research remains consistent year after year. The number one emotion mothers experience more than any other is…doubt. And it’s a real deep-seated self-doubt, at that. As in, “I doubt whether I’m doing a good job at the most important job in the world,” and “I doubt that I can say anything when I feel like I’m doing a bad job.”
Doubt can be a powerful force in a person’s life. Do you live in the deficit of your own self-doubt? I believe too many mothers do. Actually, I know for a fact that too many mothers do. When you operate your life from the deficit of self-doubt, you don’t give yourself enough credit. You create an image in your mind that you’re not good enough and then you act on that image. And by acting, I mean trying too hard, working too hard, saying yes too often. You know the drill.
Starting every day from a deficit is not a good place to start. If you want to change your life, you first must change your thoughts. If you believe that you are good enough, smart enough, kind enough, pretty enough, whatever enough…your life will improve dramatically. And guess what? You get to believe whatever you want to believe. Regardless of the circumstances in your life, never forget that you are the writer, director, and producer of the images in your mind. Nobody controls that reel except for you.
Act-ion!
