Can I change my life with my thoughts?

What if I told you that you have control over the happiness in your life?

You might have a hard time believing it or you might embrace the idea but have no idea how to go about it.

This idea is the basis of The Law of Attraction and the teaching of books like The Power of Positive Thinking and Think and Grow Rich, but it goes beyond the self-help genre.

Science itself has shown us that it is possible to change our lives by changing our thoughts and it's not just mystical ramblings.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) uses this premise to help people with mental health issues learn how to change the unhappy feelings and thoughts.

In CBT it's important to note the cycle of thoughts, emotions, and behavior and how each of them affect the other.

Emotions are dictated by chemical reactions. You've probably heard of the neurotransmitters that create feelings like happiness and love. These chemicals are activated with actions or thoughts.

Exercise releases endorphins which are feel good chemicals. And positive thinking can also create these type of reactions.

Each thought either creates a new neural pathway between neurons in your brain or it strengthens an existing one. These pathways become automatic when they have been strengthened by years of conditioning.

For example lets say one day an aunt told you that you look fat in your dress and you felt sad and angry. Now every time that your aunt comes over, you automatically feel saddened and angered even when she tells you something positive. It no longer makes sense to feel that way but the strong emotional reaction that you had to that one event, created a new pathway, and every time you thought about the event and recreated the feelings of the event, you strengthened that pathway. Now the feelings come without even thinking about the event, just the association to your aunt, triggers your emotional and physical response.

The same process that these negative events use to create the corresponding negative feelings, can be used to create positive feelings, actions, and thoughts.

We can create neural pathways and we can break them.

The first step is recognizing the patterns that are already there.

• Ask yourself what physical actions trigger negative feelings. (i.e. eating junk food, binge watching TV, or getting into an argument.)

• Also note what thoughts spur negative feelings as well. (i.e. "today is a bad day" "I am so dumb!" etc.)

Now that you have a good understanding of what is causing you to feel unhappy, you can start to create new paths that lead to happiness.

• Take actions that will break and replace current bad habits.

• And start reciting Positive Affirmations that contradict the negative thoughts you tell yourself.

At first these things will feel uncomfortable and might be difficult and that is because your body is used to its comfortable ways but with time these new actions and thoughts will become your new automatic processes .

Positive thinking can feel silly at first but happiness also feels silly amongst the masses of people living in self created sadness.

You do have control in this matter.

Take it!

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