Some people say the situations life presents dictate what kind of life you will have. Others maintain it’s the way you react to these challenges that determines your satisfaction in life.
But I take a different approach from the nature versus nurture debate. It’s not the situation itself that determines your quality of life, or your physical and emotional reaction to it. It’s the way you think about life’s hard times that determines how much impact they have on you.
Related: Look for the Hidden Good and 3 Other Ways to React to Problems
You can think of your thoughts as a conscious stream of mental judgments, evaluations and arguments. What’s important to remember is they are almost impossible to turn off. Except perhaps through meditation, and even then those pain-in-the-butt thoughts will do whatever they can to keep you from the peace and quiet you deserve.
They’re always there and they always have an effect on you. But thoughts can be appraised in a very simple way: Do they strengthen you or weaken you?
Successful people consciously or subconsciously think successful thoughts. Whether they are aware of it, their predominant thoughts are consistently of optimism for health, wealth and abundance. They don’t allow negative thoughts of deficiency and failure to take root in their minds.
That doesn’t mean they don’t have negative thoughts. We all do. It simply means the majority are positive. You can see evidence of this in the people you come in contact with every day. Have you noticed that those who are always talking about their ailments are always ill? Those who speak about prosperity are prosperous. Those who talk about how wonderful life is are always happy. Your thoughts cumulatively provide a general blueprint of directives for how you react to everything in your life. Whatever you habitually think about or focus on the most will appear in your life.
So whatever you do, stop focusing on what you don’t have or what’s not working in your life. That’s not going to end well for you.
