“In every moment I have a choice.
I’ve chosen to feel grateful.
I’ve chosen to be joyful.
I’ve chosen to see my blessings.
I’ve chosen to see the beautiful.
I’ve chosen to be excited about the simple things.
I’ve chosen to smile more often.
I’ve chosen to thank God every single day.”

Years ago when I lived through dark times of anxiety and depression, seeing such an uplifting, positive quote brought a sneer to my face.

I sneered because I truly didn’t feel that the positive words or thoughts applied to me.

I despaired of feeling positive again. I struggled with the darkness, felt overwhelmed, because I felt abandoned and unloved by God.

I felt like a failure and I felt worthless.

I felt unworthy of good and positive things happening in my life, even though I craved to be relieved from my mental anguish.

The inner damage from having internalized the verbal, physical and psychological abuse showed clearly in my thoughts and my lack of knowledge of how to help myself.

The first thing I needed to do I felt, was to teach myself to like myself.

Then I would be able to respond more positively to life and put into practice all the above positive tools.

The quote above isn’t just a bunch of lovely words strung together, but they’re tools to help us daily to uplift our spirits!

How do we teach ourselves to like ourselves?

I started with practicing to suspend judgement of myself.

This means that instead of berating yourself or speaking harshly to yourself when you don’t do something “right”, that you just suspend those thoughts.

Instead of speaking harshly to yourself, I’d like you to start to practice to be patient with yourself.

I’d also like you to start speaking encouragingly to yourself. Be gentle. Be kind.

Find positive quotes which resonate withing you right now. (Not ones you think you should respond to because they sound so elevated, but ones which you can relate to, right now.)

As you grow and heal, those quotes may lose their feeling of importance, while others start to feel more relevant to you.

Be patient with yourself!

It takes time to retrain our minds and our spirits to see ourselves differently!

It took time to break your spirit, so it’s going to take time to heal it!

Be persistent!

It may feel very unnatural to speak kindly to yourself, not to beat yourself up, because up until now, it wasn’t part of your life!

It took a long time for me to feel comfortable with speaking to myself positively!

It took a long time before I could release the negative thoughts I had about myself!

It took a long time before I could look myself in the eye in the mirror and tell myself I was worthy and worthwhile.

We each have a time frame it will take to achieve retraining our spirits, so no comparisons need to be made with anyone else!

What do I mean the words above are tools?

Each line of the quote above is a powerful way to realign our thoughts to the positive, to help us to feel better each day, and to start creating a place in our minds where we see opportunities and solutions where before we only saw walls!

By choosing to do each of these behaviors and thoughts, we create new Neural Pathways in our brains, which effectively rewire how we think!

Keep doing them and the old Neural Pathways where your negative thoughts dominated and overwhelmed you, will eventually fade away from less and less use!

How will you know you’ve succeeded?

When you can read the words in the quote above and smile, feel comfortable with them, knowing you’ve been putting them into practice!

Once you’ve been putting these new thought patterns into use, you will find it soooo much easier to get your mind and spirit back on track when the negative thoughts try to resurface when things in life aren’t going well!

Using these positive thoughts doesn’t mean that bad or difficult times will never again enter your life, it means that you will have developed the inner tools to handle them!

More good stuff:
Gratitude, Joy and Synchronicity
Want another dose of gratitude with that?!
Everything comes to you in the right moment. Be patient. Be grateful.
Gratitude attracts more reasons to be grateful!
Did you know these things about GRATITUDE?
GRATITUDE in advance is the most powerful creative force in the Universe
Becoming more positive; Be in a state of gratitude for everything – new viewpoints below…
Speak of the past gratefully…
Living the circle of life… giving and receiving in gratitude
Choices, Chances, Changes. You must make a Choice to take a Chance or your life will never Change.
How people treat you is their karma… How you react is yours…
It is always an inside work. It starts within us
No matter how long you’ve traveled in the wrong direction, you can always turn around
The most important spiritual growth doesn’t happen when you’re meditating or on a yoga mat.
You are allowed to be both a Masterpiece and a Work in Progress, simultaneously.
Let your past make you better not bitter.
Often it’s the deepest pain which empowers you to grow into your highest self.

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
Thank you for sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara

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