Maintaining a Healthy Thought Life

If you have topic ideas for our podcast or want to reach Michelle, send us a text! We'd love to hear from you!As crazy as it sounds, one of the things I had to learn years ago, was to expect trials and adversities rather than trying to dodge them. Not that I focused ON them or visualized them because that would be counterproductive and it would contradict everything I have been sharing in this book. Instead, I came to the realization that tough times, failures and challenges are unavoidable. Living a life hoping they won’t happen is a false pretense and will always catch us unprepared. When we live with this mindset, we set ourselves up to be overtaken by life’s challenges. It takes us to a point where we develop habits of reactive thinking. This type of thinking then sets off a downward spiral of disappointment, hurt, anger and a victim’s mentality.  This reactive response will inevitably lead us into depression, disease and both, mental and physical illness. Think about the word, “Dis-ease”. Although the common definition means illness, the origin of the word is French, meaning “lack of ease”. This can then be correlated with many of the things we have already discussed like cognitive dissonance, unforgiveness, lack of confidence, offense and multiples of others.Allowing the habit of reactivity into our lives and careers, places us right back into old mindsets and sets us up for disaster on every front. By choosing to react negatively, we are sending our electrical impulses firing off through past neural networks. The unfortunate fact is that these past networks may be on the brink of becoming obsolete in areas where we are working on retraining our brain.  In doing so, we revive old habits by breathing new life into them and ultimately, resurrecting them. On each occasion where we succumb to these old patterns, the neurosynaptic response automatically triggers a release of toxic hormones all over again and we re-establish old routines, leading us right back to disease, depression, etc. The only way to avoid this vicious cycle is to maintain a consistent “success routine”. Just as in the story of Sophia, resolve to rise up every day and make a choice to bolster your mind and heart by filling it with the right information. Empower yourself with thoughts and feelings that will equip you to stand strong against anything that may distract or discourage you. Yet at the same time, maintain the mindset of expectation for good things to happen and get serious about your destiny!Excerpts and insights* from Chapter 7 of "Your Journey to Greatness Through Routine: A Guide to Creating a Success Routine" Book Contains:7 Actual Case Studies8 Downloadable ToolsAssessment Questions at the End of Each ChapterThe Brain Science Behind HabitsRetraining Your Brain Through Cognitive RestructuringHeart Science, Energy and the Law of AttractionPowerful Principles of Influence and GreatnessTips and Tools to Build Your Success Routine*Certain portions have been added to actual book excerpts by the author.  LEARN MORE AND PURCHASE THE BOOK at http://michellesteffes.com/bookSupport the showMichelle L Steffes is a Certified Speaker, Corporate Trainer, Executive Coach and Author of two books: "Reframe & Rewire" (also available on Audible) and "The Machine Inside Me." Discover more and contact her through her website, IPV Consulting.