The Secret to Reaching Your Full Potential: Crush Negative Thoughts

More money. More fun. A better body. More time with our families.

That’s what we all want, right?

That’s why we keep showing up everyday.

That’s why we do things like pass on our favorite snack, or go to sleep late and wake up early…

Just to do it all again the next day.

But have you ever felt like none of it was worth it?

When you work hard on a goal and don’t see results, it’s understandable to want to quit.

What’s the point of continuing?

Won’t you look stupid 10 years from now if you do all this work and don’t end up successful?

Why not just stop now and cut your losses?

That’s what I thought this morning when I woke up at 5am.

My exact thoughts were:

“Wtf am I doing this for?

I’m pretty sure it’s plenty people in the world getting a whole bunch of success without doing all this.

So why am I doing it?”

But then I realized…

I’m not other people.

What work for them might not work for me.

I need to do what’s gone work for me.

And ultimately, I was only telling myself that to give myself an excuse to go back to sleep.

And if you do that same thing…

You’re playing yourself.

Now I ain’t saying you should never have those kinda thoughts.

They happen automatically.

But I am saying that if you want anything that’s worth having…

You need to know how to catch those thoughts as they happen and replace them.

That’s how you get out of your own way and start to reach your full potential.

So how do you catch this types of thoughts as they happen?

These 2 strategies might help:

1. Use the WAIT method. Ask yourself “What Am I Thinking?”

Thinking about what you’re thinking about allows you to catch those negative thoughts in real time and replace them with better ones.

But if you don’t notice them until it’s too late…

You need to exercise that muscle.

If that’s you, read strategy 2.

2. Practice journaling on a regular basis.

Don’t dismiss this as cliche advice. It’s cliche for a reason… It works.

Journaling lets you look at your thoughts outside of your head.

That makes it easier to notice certain patterns, and what triggers them.

But what if I don’t know what to journal about?

If you don’t know what you journal about…

Try this framework:

• Circumstance

  • The facts of the situation

• Thoughts

  • Your thoughts about the circumstance

• Feelings

  • How those thoughts make you feel

• Actions

  • What you do when you feel that way

• Results

  • What results you get from those actions (notice that the results you get are always a direct result of your thoughts).

Here’s a pre-filled template I created that allows you do this exercise as many times you want, and all you have to do is fill in your responses.

This template lets you replay situations from your life and understand how your own thoughts cause negative result, and hold you back.

From there, you can redo the exercise, replacing those negative thoughts with positive ones to see how they would give you a better result.

Then you can start implementing what you learn in the future.

And most importantly, you’ll learn how to start catching those thoughts and replacing them as they happen, so you never create the negative results in the first place.

Eventually, you’ll stop having those thoughts at all.

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