Give yourself the most wonderful gift – the gift of yourself.

A lot of us coast through life constantly aware of our faults, of where we’re not perfect but with little focus on who we are and what we bring to the world. In truth, if I was to ask you to write a list of your good points it is likely that you would have to stop and think about it first but if I asked you to write a list of your bad points the list would just flow.
Loving and accepting ourselves just as we are is often something we don’t consider doing without it being conditional on something else happening such as losing weight, getting the right job, having the perfect partner in our life, winning the lottery and so on. Yet in order for anything to change externally to ourselves, we must first change what’s going on internally.
By changing our internal feelings we can experience more happiness in our lives and will

appreciate all the good things in life that we have already, thereby allowing yet more good to come to us. By changing how we think about ourselves we behave differently and the way we communicate and interact with people changes, the consequence of this is that we create more positive experiences. This in turn leaves us open to more opportunities and we find coincidences appear like little miracles that move us on towards greater happiness.
So next time you look at yourself in the mirror, instead of looking for all the faults in yourself remember the world is all the more blessed with you in it, as everyone has something good to offer this world, no matter who you are or what you have experienced in the past. Recognising the truth of who you are, seeing the goodness within you and realising that just being you is all you ever need to be is the best gift you can give to yourself.
Oh yes, and in case you forgot to remind yourself this morning, your eyes are dazzling, your smile lights up your face, you have a warm heart that is capable of sending rays of love throughout the world and your bottom looks great in whatever you wear!

“Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.” – Robert Henri

Are you feeling uninspired and unmotivated? Do you wish life was easier?

Emotions such as these are great indicators to our thoughts and beliefs. By taking a moment to tap into your emotions you get to uncover what triggered them in the first place and in so doing you can find out if you hold a negative mindset or limiting belief.

Let’s consider the emotions already mentioned where you may feel uninspired or unmotivated. If you stop for a moment and allow yourself to feel those emotions, you can listen to the thoughts that you attach to them. You might hear yourself saying things like life is hard, things never go your way or you’re stuck in a rut. Discovering your thoughts then lead you to understand the beliefs behind them. These beliefs could be that life is a struggle, opportunities are always hard to come by or maybe you believe that you’ll never make it because you don’t have what it takes.

Once you have some idea of the beliefs that are influencing your thoughts and emotions you can reflect back over your life to see where they came from. Can you hear similar words being spoken by your parents or teachers? Nonetheless, even if you’re not sure what started you off believing in this negative way you can still do something about it.

Remember, we were all born with the same wide eyed view of the world where everything was possible. Try to think the opposite of what your negative beliefs are and imagine, with a childlike innocence, of how the positive equivalent of those negative beliefs would feel like. Choose to feel emotions that directly oppose the negative ones and write down words that represent these good feelings. Focus on these new words that give you positive feelings every time you feel your negative emotion so that you recognise it but then replace it with how you want to feel.

So cherish your emotions and allow them to give you insight into your thoughts and beliefs so that you can make any changes that are necessary to your mindset in order to bring back a sense of wonder, joy, love and happiness into your life.

“An old belief is like an old shoe. We so value its comfort that we fail to notice the hole in it.” – Robert Brault

In last Monday’s Morning Motivation I referred to how your thoughts create the experiences of your life, this week you will see how they also reinforce your beliefs which creates a self-perpetuating cycle of what you experience in your life.

Let’s take a person who hasn’t achieved something they wanted to at some point in their lives, this may make them feel like they’re a failure. Perhaps someone says something to them about not being good enough to achieve what they want which makes the feeling of being a failure or not good enough become their belief. Once this belief takes root it becomes part of who they are, affecting how they think and behave. Any time they make a mistake this provides them with proof that they aren’t good enough and if they succeed at anything, they just put it down to luck.

The trick here is to understand that any limiting beliefs you have were created by you as a result of something you experienced so they are not necessarily true. By becoming aware of them you can start to provide yourself with evidence of times in your life when these limiting beliefs weren’t true. By recognising these times that contradict your limiting beliefs you’re proving them wrong and showing that they’re not true. Then next time you want to do something that your limiting belief would otherwise prevent you from doing, change your thoughts into ones that support you so that you can start to challenge and change your deep rooted beliefs.

It takes practice to keep changing your thoughts in order to defy your beliefs, particularly

as your routine way of thinking is easy, it’s automatic and takes little effort. Yet with just repeated attempts at thinking new, positive and supportive thoughts, the new way of thinking becomes a habit. Your new thoughts create new experiences which lead to new beliefs. Before long your old, limiting beliefs that felt like a comfortable pair of shoes are replaced with new, liberating beliefs that put a spring back in your step!

“Change your thoughts and you change your world” Norman Vincent Peale

Have you ever come across the concept that your thoughts create your life?

It’s a long held belief of many that our thoughts determine how we feel, what words we say, how we behave and also what we have or don’t have in our lives. For example take the person who thinks they’re a failure, as a result of thinking of themselves in this way they feel like they won’t succeed. By feeling this way it impacts their behaviour as they don’t put in the effort they would otherwise put in because they believe there’s no point. Their negative attitude and lack of effort leads to them not performing as well as they could which in turn reinforces their thinking that they’re a failure and so the self-perpetuating cycle is created. Can you relate to this in some way?

However, just by changing the way you think you can change any aspect of your life which

is not making you happy. In the example above, if the person who feels like a failure changed their thoughts so that they thought of themselves as successful at everything they do and learn at every opportunity, they create a positive outlook on life. This positive attitude means that they try their best at everything in order to get the best possible results which gives them a sense of achievement, it makes them feel good about themselves and in turn this leads to them thinking that they thrive in life. A new self-perpetuating cycle is created but this time it’s a positive one. It really is that simple!

Become aware of where your negative thoughts are not serving you and try thinking the opposite, positive thoughts instead. Indulge yourself with this new positive thought and notice how it feels if the positive thought were true.

You always have a choice; you can either think a negative thought or a positive one, either way you’re going to think one so why not choose the positive thought instead?