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Don’t you love that feeling of being in total flow with your life?
You feel energised, positive, and calm – totally in love with the life you are living.
However, many of us don’t stay in this ‘state of being’ for very long.

We each face a lifetime of challenges and transitions, and there is always another problem to be solved, or an issue weighing us down. As the old saying goes; “what you focus on grows”.
For instance, if we focus our minds on all of the negative behaviours of our children, that’s what we will see and experience. If we focus on their positive behaviours and praise them, that is what we will nurture and experience – what we focus on grows. Did you know that your brain is conditioned to look for the negative? Have you ever found yourself dwelling on an insult or argument, or fixating on your mistakes or poor judgement? Have you noticed that criticisms often have a greater impact than compliments, and bad news frequently draws more attention than good?

As humans, we tend to:

• Remember traumatic experiences better than positive ones
• Recall insults better than praise
• React more strongly to negative than positive stimuli
• Think about negative things more frequently than positive ones
• Respond more strongly to negative events than to equally positive ones

The reason for this is that negative events have a greater impact on our brains than positive ones. Psychologists refer to this as “the negative bias”, and it can have a powerful effect on your behaviour, your decisions and even your relationships. We have around 12,000 – 60,000 thoughts every single day. Shockingly, 80 percent of our daily thoughts are negative! That’s a lot of negative thoughts. What’s funny, yet not funny at all, is that 98 percent of the negative thoughts we had yesterday are the same ones we will be thinking about today. Negative thinking will never make your life positive, so how do we focus our energy and attention on the things that make our energy and life flow better?

First and foremost, we need to get a clear vision of what we really seek in our lives. When we have this vision, it’s much easier to devote your energy, time and focus to achieving it. Sometimes we focus so much on what we don’t want – that it’s what we keep getting served. Our focus acts as both a magnifying glass and a magnet. In other words, whatever we put our attention on, expands in our life. Whatever we talk about, we see more of. Whatever we think about, we experience more of. How does it all work?

Our brains are trained to look for what we are thinking about. Have you noticed when you decide to buy a new car, suddenly you see that car everywhere? Our focus acts as reinforcement and our brains are very clever at filtering the information we don’t need and delivering what it’s been asked to focus on.

If you want more flow, peace of mind, clarity, and joy in your life, it’s time to have a look at where you focus your mind.
• If you want to achieve or do something it starts with a decision and focus (like our goal weight)
• If you want to be more, we decide and focus on improving ourselves (like learning to be more positive)
• If you want to have more, we decide and focus on making that happen (like wanting to buy our first house)

What You Focus on Grows

It takes practice to notice and retrain ourselves to stop our negative self-talk. Being aware of our own tendency towards negativity and consciously elevating happier thoughts is one of the best ways to combat negative thinking. We are the creators of our own life. It is our choice as to what we focus on every day – because where our focus goes, energy flows.

7 Tips To Help You Focus Your Energy

1. Savour positive moments – when you experience one, stop and take a few moments to really feel it.
2. Practice daily gratitude – gratitude turns what we have into ‘enough’. What we appreciate, appreciates.
3. Meditation – meditation allows you to quiet your mind and take control of your thoughts.
4. Journal – journaling reminds us of our goals and learnings in life.
5. My Vision Book – is a system to help you clarify your thoughts, goals, and desires so you can focus on achieving them www.myvisionbook.com.au
6. Sound Therapy – music expands our cognitive range, helps us increase energy and focus and can lead to impressive insights and breakthroughs.
7. Exercise – it’s proven; people have ground-breaking ideas while they’re exercising.

Author

  • PakMag Writer

    PakMag has a number of contributors and writers who sometimes like to remain anonymous so here is a collection of the articles and stories. Enjoy!