Practicing What I Am Preaching!
Posted on November 11, 2021 by Bridget Fitzpatrick, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Taking one's own advice can be hard. But I did and I was apply to change some of my most scariest thoughts.
When it comes to taking your own advice, it is not always the easiest thing to do. However I found myself in a situation where I needed to really grab on to the words I had written in an earlier blog here on Noomi. The earlier blog was regarding controlling your thoughts. I believe we can all control our thoughts once we take some deep breaths and refocus. Easy to think about when you are not in the moment right?
Well recently I found myself “in the moment” of having thoughts I did not want in my head. I actually had a ridiculous but very realistic nightmare. I woke up so terrified that I felt I was paralyzed to move from my bed. It didn’t help that it was 5:00AM and it was pitch black outside. My nightmare dealt with alligators outside of my house that were eating people. (Apparently these are the types of nightmares one experiences in Florida lol). Regardless of how unrealistic it was, in the moment, it felt that my life was in danger and I was scared.
As I laid in bed recalling the nightmare, I also recalled the blog I wrote about controlling our thoughts. I started practicing what I had written about earlier. I started taking full deep breaths instead of the shallow, short breaths that the nightmare induced, I started thinking about replacing my thoughts with happy thoughts. Even without experiencing a nightmare, how many times have we let negative thoughts control where our mind goes and eventually turning a simple thought into our own worst nightmare?
I started thinking about how much joy I get from my grandsons. I started thinking about unique, silly moments that I have shared individually with all four of them. I could feel the tension and the fear leaving my body the more that I thought of the boys. The thoughts about the nightmare started leaving my body and I was soon filled with calmness and love.
As I look back on this experience, it almost feels like my nightmare was a test that I passed and a reminder for what is possible if I control my thoughts. In this case I had a nightmare. It wasn’t real even though it felt incredibly real. Next time my negative thoughts likely will be about a real situation. The process works the same though, whether it is a real or imagined situation. Getting lost in negative thoughts never helps a situation and many times it leaves us paralyzed to move forward. Replacing those thoughts with positive thoughts will allow you to calm down and look at your situation more realistically. And if you practice this enough, it will become your standard way of operating your life. Don’t get lost in negative thinking. It takes you down a path that you don’t need to go down. Change your thoughts and you change your world.
