6. Replace the Thoughts

Thought replacement is one of many ways you can manage your negative thoughts. This method is useful when you feel yourself sliding toward negativity again. Your awareness of your thoughts can give you a clue about any possible shift into a negative mindset and help you get ahead of it. All human beings have times when they are in a negative slump for a while. The goal with this awareness and replacement process isn’t to completely prevent negative thoughts from ever entering your mind. That just isn’t realistic. The idea is to improve your ability to reduce and manage the negativity in your mind. This can keep your brain from getting bogged down and keep you from becoming stagnant every time you are distressed about something.

You can use new positive thoughts and affirmations to set up a new plan in your mind. Through this process you can eliminate the thoughts that steer your mind down a path that leads to more negativity and lack of focus on your goal. You can use positive financial affirmations to develop a holistic, positive mindset toward money. Thus, positive self-affirmation allows you to develop a positive mindset toward every endeavor, personal as well as career or business.

As you acknowledge and release the negative thoughts about your finances, you can start introducing new thoughts in your mind. First, consider some of the positive changes or actions you are doing or can take. When you release a poor thought about your finances, say something new to yourself like, “I’m feeling more in control because I have cut down some of my expenses,” or, “I’m finding methods to use my money in a smart way that causes it to grow instead of disappear.” Use the positive information you are learning from your challenging situation to stay encouraged.

Negative thoughts are the ones that destroy the healthy thoughts. When you’re faced with situations and circumstances that breed unhealthy thoughts, instead of facing and disarming them, you unknowingly fuel them with the energy they need to grow by dwelling on them, contemplating them, running the worst-case scenarios through your mind until one of those might seem the only scenario. You can wallow and marinate in these negative thoughts, constantly revisiting them and letting them run amok in your head like rabid dogs.

Most of us don’t think about the thoughts we’re having or the thousands of choices and decisions we’re making every day based on thoughts we don’t even know we’re having. So it’s no surprise that your negative thoughts influence your decisions, actions, emotions, and finances in a negative manner. By allowing the negative thoughts to infiltrate your mind, they subsequently have a huge effect on your financial life. This is not a theory, but rather what I (and many others) have experienced. Your thoughts can be physically, emotionally, and financially dangerous because they are so powerful. You must harness and embrace this power to control your thought processes.

In my case, I was thinking that I wanted to be this great entrepreneur and break free from the confines of corporate America. But, at the same time, I was thinking, “Yeah right; like that’s going to happen.” I was canceling the positive words or thoughts out with negative thinking. Although I didn’t verbalize my fear of failure, that fear nevertheless had a Kung Fu grip on the progression of my life. I thought it; therefore, it was so. I was destined to remain just where I was in middle management, waiting for something amazing to happen, waiting for that email that would change my life, the phone call that would help me step out of the door, or the contract that would give me permission to take a leap of faith. I know it sounds crazy when you think about it, but that was my reality or the reality I had convinced myself I lived in daily.

Table 6-1 Negative and Positive Thoughts

Replace each negative thought with positive thoughts and words of affirmation. Positive thoughts and affirmations allow you to begin the process of changing your mind so that you can focus on thoughts that can add value to your life. Use W.E.A.L.T.H. thoughts and affirmations to push poor thoughts out of your mind. Cleanse your mental palate with positive thoughts and start to develop a holistic, positive mindset toward finances.

When you identify the main concern driving the negative thoughts about your finances, which is a lack of control, when you do something that makes you feel more in control, you take the fuel out of your negative thoughts. You feel less threatened by the negative statements you hear in your mind because your emotions are calmed by your actions. “I’m never going to make it out of this money mess” has less power when you start getting results from your actions like a check from a project.

Write the poor thought on a piece of paper and shred it, ball it up, or burn it to watch your negative thought go up in smoke. Name your thoughts. Many times your thoughts are repetitive and involve the same thought. My thought frequently is, “I don’t really know if I’ll be able to do this.” When thoughts come up along that story line, I can say, “Here’s my ‘I’m not able’ story,” and just let it go.

As you achieve more success, you build locomotive momentum that keeps you encouraged and moving forward. When you start to put better and more encouraging thoughts into your mind, they will begin to come more easily each day. Negative thoughts might still rear their ugly heads, but maybe not so frequently, or with as much muscle. The poor thoughts become easier to replace because your feelings are driven by more W.E.A.L.T.H. thoughts. Just as negative thoughts can build and feed on themselves, positive ones can do the same. This takes work and patience, but letting go and replacing the thoughts as they come can tame the raging stream of negativity:

Why are you having this thought?

By eliminating this thought, how might your life improve?

Tell yourself that this thought has no place in your mind and must be eliminated.

Think about what you have to be grateful for instead of what you are lacking.