Tending to your Garden of Happiness - Advanced Activity to help Positive Thinking
GARDEN OF HAPPINESS
This is another crucial element to sustaining your happiness. My students make The Happiness Decision, and they forsake all negative thoughts.
I know negative thoughts will continue despite making The Happiness Decision. It is important to identify your own negative thinking patterns. What types of negative thoughts are you having? Are they about yourself? Are they about your family? Are they about your job? What are they about? Through gaining awareness of your negative thinking patterns you can identify and challenge the underlying subconscious beliefs. I consider the negative subconscious belief to be the root of a weed in your garden of happiness.
Belief - Thought - Emotion - Behavior
You may realize you feel unhappy when you are feeling unhappy. However, this is really the tip of the iceberg. Before you have a feeling, you have a thought that is triggered by a subconscious belief.
It takes a lot of awareness to be able to find the one particular negative thought that is triggering the emotion and, therefore, influencing the behavior.
For example, a negative thought is “I can’t do it.” That could lead to the emotion of unhappiness and the behaviors of lethargy and isolation.
I can’t do it (thought) - unhappiness (emotion)
- lethargy & isolation (behavior)
This exercise of weeding your garden of happiness is a method to determine the root belief system in your subconscious. Ready? Make sure you are alone and will be undisturbed.
You can access your subconscious through this particular exercise:
1. Identify a negative thought or a recurring negative thought.
2. Sit with this negative thought for a moment.
3. Go into your heart space to identify the underlying belief of this thought:
Take a deep breath. Eyes are closed.
Put one hand on your heart, one hand on your belly.
Take another deep breath.
Drop your attention into your heart center.
Focus your awareness into the area of your heart.
Focus on creating an all loving, all nurturing, all accepting,
open environment there.
Allow your heartbeat to come through your chest to the palm of your hand.
When you feel your heartbeat ask yourself, “What is the underlying belief?”
Wait for an inner response.
Ask the next question, “Is this the root belief?”
Wait for the response.
When you hear the answer, challenge it.
“Is ____ the root belief?” and wait for a response.
If the answer is “No,” you have to dig deeper and ask again.
Then wait.
When your heart answers again, challenge it.
“Is ____ the root belief?”
Repeat until your heart is complete.
When your heart is affirmative and you feel confident you have identified the root belief in your subconscious, you have determined the root of the weed in your garden of happiness.
IDENTIFY YOUR WEED
I’m not good enough - I can’t do it - unhappy - lethargy & isolation
(belief) (thought) (emotion) (behavior)
When you clearly understand the root belief of this particular thought, take a deep breath and open your eyes.
You are coming back to your conscious self from your subconscious.
4. Ask yourself: Is this true?
For example, I have witnessed many overachieving, amazing people who hold the belief:
“I’m not good enough.”
Obviously, we can rationalize this as FALSE!
Is it true that you have been holding a false belief which is triggering you to negative thinking, which is triggering negative emotional experiences, and, therefore, guiding you into negative behavioral patterns?
Is this a truly accurate experience in your life?
Have you really believed that?
Have you really been thinking that, feeling like that, and behaving like that?
Most likely the answers are “YES”.
Challenge this belief.
Let’s use “I’m not good enough” as an example.
Is this belief really true?
Have you been able to handle life? Have you been able to accomplish your goals? Have you been able to go to college? Have you been on a winning team? Is this belief really true?
Most likely it is false.
Most likely something happened to you between the age of zero to six where you were made to believe this as the truth. Do you really believe this now? We can have non-attachment around this belief. All we need to do is recognize that something might have happened to you (a sibling was born, you were hungry, a toy was taken away or worse) during your first six years of life that made you believe this.
Are you old enough to choose your own belief system now?
YES!
Do you want a belief system which operates on the truth?
YES!
Do you want a belief system that guides your upward spiral?
You are old enough to choose your belief system so you want to choose a belief system that is going to support your upward spiral instead of inhibit your upward spiral or even worse, create a downward spiral.
You need to eradicate the root belief within this weed in your garden of happiness and now…
5. Plant a flower in alignment with the truth. For example,
“I am amazing!”
This is the truth!
You are amazing. Do you really believe that? Do you want to believe that? Are you ready to update your consciousness to the truth? This is a moment of awakening where you decide to update your VHS psychology to MP3 psychology.
Is this new belief in your upward spiral?
If you were truly believing “I am amazing!”, what would you be thinking? “I can do anything!” If you were thinking “I can do anything!”, how would you feel? You would feel happy. Through this feeling of happiness, your behavior would be to make your dreams come true.
PLANT A FLOWER
I am amazing - I can do anything - happy - motivation &
inspiration
(belief) (thought) (emotion) (behavior)
In order for you to effectively weed out your garden of happiness of negative beliefs, you must
fertilize the new flower 5,000 times.
However many times you have had the identified negative thought, you must counter it 5,000 times in order to make significant change. Think about how many cells are in your body or stars in the sky to put that number into perspective. When considering significant psychological change, it requires work and effort to change. This is the most rewarding work you could ever do!
YOU MUST WEED YOUR GARDEN OF HAPPINESS OF NEGATIVE BELIEFS!
Weed out your garden of happiness of these negative beliefs for EVERY SINGLE one of your recurring negative thoughts.
Ultimately, you want to have zero negative beliefs, triggering zero negative thoughts, zero negative emotions, and zero negative behaviors. This will put you in alignment with your intention of forsaking all negative thoughts as indicated in your signed Happiness Decision.
Becoming a positive thinker takes time, effort, diligence, and perseverance. You can do it if you commit to doing the work.
Work on your garden of happiness
by weeding and planting flowers.