Ever get a nagging feeling that you were born in the wrong place at the wrong time? Ever feel like you’re a jumbled jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces seem to fit together?
What do you do when you get that feeling? Do you dismiss it as wishful thinking? Are you quick to brush it off? Do you keep going on the course you’ve always been going?
Do you find yourself being unhappy even though you’ve been doing what you think you’re “supposed” to do? Do you frequently feel sick or completely drained of energy for no reason at all?
If all those aren’t signs that your intuition is screaming at you to wake up, I don’t know what is. It’s not easy to find out what is going right in your life. But it’s usually easier to identify what’s going wrong in your life and what’s causing you stress. You can learn to recognize and deal with mental noise. You can encourage positive thoughts, or lighthouses, in order to look past the clutter and find the answer.
Negative thoughts are challenges to be deciphered.
Maybe your family or friends are smothering you with advice and opinions that are stressing you out. Realize that anything that is needlessly stressful is a form of mental noise. Does that mean you need to divorce your family? It’s highly improbable. It’s far easier to minimize the impact of that noise by recognizing it for what it is. Take advice with a grain of salt. Accept that your family and friends simply aren’t going to agree with everything you want to do. Their perception of the world is going to be different than yours and it doesn’t make yours less valid.
Maybe your job is stressing you out. Maybe you can’t quit right away because you have bills to pay, children to support, whatever. Maybe you are having difficulty finding a new job or getting that business off the ground. But you can change the way you think about it. Identify the negative thoughts you have about your job and isolate them. Pick them apart, see them in a different light.
This doesn’t mean that you have to accept your job and stick with it until you retire. This also isn’t about trying to completely ignoring the negative thoughts. This is about identifying negative thoughts, quarantizing them, making room for positive thoughts, and giving your intuition a chance to shine through.
Positive thoughts are lighthouses to guide you.
If there is something you enjoy, even if you suck at it, recognize the feelings those bring as well. What tends to bring out calm, satisfying feelings in you? When you are in a calm, serene state of mind you are able to see the world more clearly. You aren’t always going to feel positive but you can encourage this state of mind to be dominant by doing more of the things that get you there.
When you spend most of your time in a serene mindst, your intuition and insight become more clear. The answers still won’t be obvious at first but with practice you get better at distinguishing between your intuition and your ego. Again, you can do this by identifying (but not ignoring) the thoughts that don’t seem to fit and encouraging the ones that do.
Negative and positive thoughts are necessary to complete the puzzle.
Most personal development books and articles are quick to tell you that you need to learn how to ignore negative thoughts and only think positive thoughts. But ignoring thoughts and emotions isn’t possible. The more you suppress them, the more they will keep coming up. Just like positive thoughts, negative thoughts need to be acknowledged. When they begin to get in the way it’s a sign that something is not right. Usually that “something” is an internal disconnect. It means that you aren’t centered and that your attitude towards life needs an adjustment.
Suppose you’re putting together a jigsaw puzzle and you are trying to determine what the next piece is. Usually you find the correct piece by recognizing which pieces aren’t the right ones. Does this mean the ‘wrong’ pieces don’t belong in the puzzle at all? Of course not! They just don’t fit in that particular spot.
Maybe you need to look at the wrong piece from a different light to figure out where it comes from. As you put more pieces together, you are able to see more of the bigger picture and how things fit together.
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Related posts:
- How to be more aware of omens and connect with your intuition
- More alone time isn’t the answer – it’ll just make you feel crappier
- I challenge you to be (partially) deaf for a day
- Knowing who you are and why you’re here (and why I have Jeremy to thank)
- Finding the courage to start telling better lies. And acting on it.
