Say you're a human. And you want a greater sense of happiness and self-worth. You hear that telling yourself how awesome and great and special you are should do the trick. You give this a shot and maybe even become really good at pretending that you have a lot of personal power. But on close examination you find that it doesn’t work; that deep inside you don’t believe yourself, and therefore aren’t too happy.
Then you get a crazy idea. Instead of trying passive positive thinking, you go out and do things of value – things that make you feel good and make a difference in the world and in your life. You help a friend, you learn a new skill, and you stop abusing yourself and put positive things into your mind and body. And guess what? You’ll feel happier! You’ll feel a greater sense of self-worth! But you won’t care about your sense of self-worth (it’s just a side effect of your state of mind and heart) because you’ll be too busy… being happy.
I enjoyed reading this. Taking action, then, allows us to believe those things about ourselves that we want to.... to be happy. I just reached that place in beginning to work out again that I actually want to work out. To me, it seems to parallel the kind of process of telling myself something and observing (time) how long it takes me to start acting as if I believe it. .... And actually believing it. Thanks Keith!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your insight. I agree that taking action serves to help us believe our positive affirmations.
ReplyDeleteWe all need to find a balance between positive thinking and positive action, I think. Sometimes we need to positive action first before we get positive feelings, which then opens the door to positive thoughts that re-enforce the behavior.
Other times we need to use the positive thinking (cognitive therapy) process, remapping negative stimulus/response patterns, before we can take action.
Congratulations on your commitment to work out!