Sick of Negative Thoughts & Anxiety Ruining Your Life? Here's the Answer

You have the inner power to tap into your consciousness today to start reframing your thoughts. 

You don't have to go through life feeling stressed and trapped by your worries, fears, self-doubt, and the general feeling of not feeling ready or good enough.

Your mind can become a place where you feel settled and happy within your inner peace.

In today's blog post, I'm going to share my take on this topic and one of the mindfulness techniques I'm using to get there.

I’m Finding Freedom by Connecting With My Inner Power

When I painted my perfect image of what it means to be free in my mind’s eye, I saw that my future self was no longer working a 9-5 job, didn’t have to ask permission to take PTO days, and got to truly enjoy working from my heart for my own business while I had more downtime to travel and explore all the hobbies I’ve always wished I had time for. 

I pretty much defined freedom as not having to answer to anyone. But I’ve come to realize that the glorious vision of freedom I’ve been working toward, isn’t freedom at all. It’s a side effect of freedom. 

Living life on my own terms that way will only come after accomplishing freedom within.

When I imagine my life of freedom now, I’m sitting somewhere cozy in complete stillness. I’m not meditating or focusing on anything in particular, I’m just at peace. 

And while my mind may still chatter about senseless things or even say mean things about me, freedom is the state of consciousness where I no longer get dragged into that chaos.

 In this vision, I am appreciating every moment that passes for what it is, a moment. 

You Don’t Have to Overthink, Panic, or Spiral Inner Peace is Real

How many times have you been excited about going out to connect with friends just to let your inner voice ruin your confidence while you’re getting dressed?

You get into this manic state where none of the clothes in your closet, even your favorites make sense. Your mind tells you that you look too fat, too skinny, frumpy, washed out and you follow it.

You try on and quickly reject so many outfits that your bedroom looks like a department store on after a massive sale. 

You’re worked up and frantic because you’re running out of time and will be late to meet your friends if you don’t hurry up and put something on.

Then you wonder if you even want to go anyway. Is it really worth it to have every single person in the restaurant staring at you in disgust because you’re so hideous?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been there, unaware of my inner power and living on a completely different planet than my inner peace! 

Then, when I settle on an outfit and figure out my hair, just to leave the house in the nick of time, I’m anxious the entire time I’m headed to the restaurant. Like I’m going to somehow end up being rejected and shunned by society.

Nine times out of 10, I get the same reaction though. 

“You look so cute! Where’d you get that top?”

“I love your hair!”

“I’m so jelly, I wish I could pull that off!”

I’ll receive compliments from my friends, the waitress, and the stranger who held the door open for me while I walked inside. Then, I’m disappointed because I allowed my mind to play on each and every body insecurity I’ve ever had and it tricked me into feeling terrible about myself. 

So, even receiving a compliment is work. 

Of course, this doesn’t only happen when we’re getting dressed to go out. It happens constantly throughout the day.

You probably don’t even know how much joy that voice in your mind snatches from you. 

I know I didn’t until I consciously started to tune into it. And you’ll notice too, once you start reframing your mind.

But the truth is, most of the meltdowns we have aren’t about anything serious at all. We just end up catching one of our mind’s thoughts and riding along on its crazy wave.

How many nights has it been difficult for you to fall asleep because your mind is yammering on about something you did wrong during the day?

You don’t have to follow it every time it invites you to hop on the train to Crazy Town. Did you know that? I’m being serious. Did you?

We are not our thoughts. Our thoughts are not us. 

We don’t have to participate in our inner dialogue. We can witness the thoughts, choose not to get involved, and simply let them go.

Helping others reach this level of inner peace, consciousness and freedom is my new goal and mission in life. Want to go deep with me? I go so much deeper into these practices and more in my virtual course, "Overcome Self-Limiting Beliefs with Self-Love." When you finish this self-paced course, you'll know how to lovingly silence your inner critic, tune into your intuition, and achieve your goals with confidence.

Reframing Thoughts, Shifting Perspective, and Falling in Love with Inner Peace

So, instead of allowing myself to be convinced that my favorite shirt has suddenly started to make me look horrible, although I look and weigh the exact same as the last time I wore it and felt amazingly confident, I’m determined to live a life where my reaction to a thought like that is no reaction at all. 

My goal is to truly harness my inner power and inner peace. Doing so will allow those thoughts to just be. I’ll let them pass by while I head to my jewelry box for a pair of earrings. 

It Isn’t Always Perfect or Easy

I’m not fully there yet. Just two days ago, I got wisped away while my mind brought up an argument that took place about two years ago. 

All of my work with reframing my thoughts went out the window while I had a full-fledged rehashing of the argument in my mind. 

I  even said all the things I wish I had said back then as if I was speaking to that person. 

It was triggered because we’re related and a family event came up and I thought I might see her. So, in a way, my mind was preparing me for Round Two.

That’s the interesting thing about our inner voice.  A lot of the time, we get caught up in what it says and we accept it as the truth because it plays on our insecurities and experiences. 

By the time I caught myself, I had been a resident of Crazy Town for several minutes and I genuinely felt angry as if the experience was happening then and not two years ago.

I’m not even embarrassed to say I got caught up in that because I learned and grew from it. Every teacher starts out as a student, right?

This other person was wrong and I’m not just saying that. It really is true. 

So, why was I still so bothered? I was bothered because I had been thinking in logical terms of what was right and wrong for two years.

“She was wrong and now I need revenge.” That was my ego.

When I really sat down with it, I was able to realize that I genuinely love her and wish her well. I just felt hurt and let down by her.

I was also able to remember a quote I really love, "The way people treat you is a statement about who they are as a human being. It is not a statement about you."

And then another, “Hurt people hurt people.”

Compassion, inner peace, and forgiveness hit me soon after that and I was able to wish her healing and find peace and closure for myself.

My partner and I have recently been talking about going away together. When I suggested a location and timeframe, he said that it would be a little too much time away from work for him and he suggested something else.

As an adult who was abused as a child and often felt trapped, I was triggered. 

I felt like he was trying to control me and tell me what to do. There was even a part of me that felt like he was trying to take me away to hurt me.

None of this was logical, nor does it align with his character in the slightest. But pieces of the wound are still within me. 

And because I had been doing the healing work to remove it, I was able to catch on pretty quickly and not allow my thoughts to carry me to such a dark place. 

Take your time to build this type of connection with yourself because it will help tremendously when you want to work on reframing your thoughts.

The point is, with that relative, I could have unknowingly triggered something within her and maybe she didn't have the knowledge to stop before things got dark like I was able to when I felt triggered. 

In fact, knowing her history, I'm sure something like that happened. 

And it doesn't give an excuse or rid her of responsibility for her own actions and reactions. It just reminds me to live with an open heart because you never know what battles someone is fighting within.

It is also a reminder that I can only control my own thoughts and actions. Thus, giving myself the right to use my inner power to sink into a place of inner peace.

So, I chose what will align more with my freedom and less with my ego. Love and forgiveness.

It was difficult, I won't lie. But I had already made the decision and promised myself that nothing is worth my inner peace.

So, I decided that if I saw her at this family event, I would say a polite "Hello" and keep it moving.

She didn’t attend though. 

You Got This!

I’m glad that I was able to share this experience and the one with my partner to help show you some examples for reframing your mind. 

And also, just because the journey isn’t perfect, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed at your mission. These moments of falling off course train us to really strengthen our inner power and bounce back with more ease. 

Do you have any stories like these? Have you tried reframing your mind? Let me know where you are on your inner peace journey in the comments!