Is your thinking toxic?

Today’s Direction Moment:  In order to find true success keep your toxic thoughts away.

Awareness is an amazing thing isn’t it?

So often we go through our lives as if we have blinders on.  We get into a pattern of thinking that sometimes we don’t even know is there, and that pattern of thinking can take us totally off track and in the opposite direction of what we want to create in our lives. Let me backtrack and share a story that will help illustrate my point….

I had been wondering why things weren’t clicking in certain areas of my life, particularly on the business front.  It seemed as if I was taking 2 steps forward and 3 back.  Maybe I’m the only one, or maybe there’s been a time in your life that you can relate to this, but for some reason it felt as if I lost my midas touch.  Ever since  “financial devastation 2008″ every time business seemed to pick up financially some type of road block stopped it right before things could take off.  Didn’t matter which income stream, things just kept trodding along, on this rollercoaster ride.

Sure the economy changed, sure my husbands job changed, sure we moved to a place I knew no one….but what I didn’t get until a wise friend hit me upside with a 2×4 was that I had changed since we ”lost it all” .  But what dawned on me was that while we lost the house, savings etc what I lost was something even more important.  I lost my ability to believe I could have it all again. I lost my ability to think “right” and I lost my ability to believe in me.

During those difficult couple of years, I lost my ability to believe in something, anything really, and chose to focus only on survival.  And until recently I didn’t even know that that shift had occurred.  I didn’t  know that my thinking had changed from that of abundance, to that of  getting by.How could it be that I changed so much that I didn’t even know it?  Easy, I stopped doing everything I could to keep toxic thinking out of my life.  And what happened?  Toxic thinking landed me in a place I didn’t want to be….broke and just getting by. 

Prior to financially combusting in 2008,  it never dawned on me that there wasn’t enough.  I didn’t think about money, in fact I didn’t know what a budget was (which is  probably one of the things that led to the devastation you can’t be rich if you don’t have a plan for what to do with it,  but that’s another blog topic). We vacationed, we laughed and we enjoyed life stress free.  But when things changed and the focus became that of feeding children and keeping a roof over our heads, I stopped doing all the things I know one has to do in order to be successful.  I stopped reading and feeding my success brain.  I stopped attending seminars. I escaped with a romance novel or a TV show.  I threw out my dream boards when we downsized (who has room for those right) and I stopped talking to God.  

I sold my Mercedes,  jewelry and ”finer” things. I even got rid of most of my personal growth materials and stopped hanging out with my “rich”  friends who “still had what we used to”.  I was angry and the worst part was that I told myself that I had to do those things.  I told myself  that to be good parents we had to get rid of everything but the necessities because it wasn’t ok to have thing like my Pandora bracelet, or Kate Spade bag if  we couldn’t pay bills.  I even told myself that our friends really just hung out with us b/c they felt bad for us….SHEESH….talk about doing a 180 degree turn in the thinking department.

Like I said to start, what a gift awareness can be.  

The reality is that when I gave away all the things that I loved and stopped doing all the things that helped us find success in the first place, I settled. And the worst thing for any entrepreneur to do, yep I did,  I gave into LACK THINKING.  And in case you were wondering,  Lack thinking is one of the most toxic things you can ever let into your life.  It will kill any chance of  making your dreams come true.  Lack thinking leads to self sabotage, giving up and settling. And those who are truly successful NEVER settle and they think from an abundance platform. 

Instead of knowing that I had the power to get back on track, our minor bump in the road (ok so some called it major, but really in the grand scheme of things totally minor) yes a minor bump in the road, convinced me that getting by was good enough. An I believed it when my new “friends” told me that I should be grateful it could be a lot worse. When the air came out of my balloon I fell into the trap of justifying that getting rid of my stuff, changing friends and downsizing was the only way we could keep a roof over our head. And therefore that’s exactly what happened.  We did just barely keep a roof over our head.  Coincidence?  Not a chance.

The reality is that I LIED to myself.  I told myself starting over wouldn’t work, and if I did the same thing could happen again. I focused on the things that happened “to us” which is also a lie…I know better….we created all of it out of fear, right down to the selling of the paper shredder (inside joke just for my hubby..,).  In fact I lied to whoever listened and comisserated with all the other “victims” of this economy.  If I had thought like the successful person that I am, IF I had been thinking with an abundant mentality I would have taken action and started over back then instead of waiting so long…And I’d still be wearing my favorite bracelet. 

Because I lied and believed that sacrifice was the only way to get through that rough spot, I got exactly what I  believed. Which happened to be the basics, what we needed nothing more.  

The point of this story is to share my awareness that without exception our thoughts are the only deciding factor that determines how you will come out of it.

Sure sometimes yucky stuff happens, but the way to get through it is to be grateful for what you have and continue to dream bigger, be bigger and don’t settle.  Take action, and do the things you know work.  Be the person you were born to be and be strong.  You will get through it, and to be honest a little better off in the end……

Note to self:  NEVER NEVER, NEVER get rid of your dream boards….they are the best medicine for keeping toxic thoughts where they belong ……in a waste facility!