That’s a great question.

“I am grateful for this happening to me because it means I can now feel this.”
“I am grateful this didn’t happen to me because now I won’t have to feel that.”

Does this sound like the definition of gratitude to you? Basically if you are grateful for something it means you are thankful.

Someone once told me after watching the movie ‘The Secret’ that they didn’t understand the concept of gratitude as it was explained in the movie, saying that it was difficult to understand how one should be grateful all the time when the majority or many of the daily occurrences are either negative or neutral. Negative or neutral events should not require gratitude because they are unwanted or undesirable events.

I am not going to say that my answer is the complete picture or complete answer, but the following is my take, and if it means anything to you, all the better. Afterwards, you can download a free short book by Apryl Jensen with her take on gratitude which I think you’ll enjoy.

To me gratitude is the acknowledgement to the universe, the world, yourself, whoever; it doesn’t matter, but acknowledgement that you are the sole creator of all events and circumstances that occur to you, whether you deem them as positive, negative or neutral.

When you acknowledge that every event and circumstance that is occurring to you is your creation then you are not displaying gratitude for the actual event but you are being grateful for having the power to create that event, whether it feels good, bad or neutral.

However, if you are of the school of thought that you are not the creator of all that occurs to you and around you, it is basically impossible for you to be grateful for anything unless it is something you want or desire.

Just imagine for a minute that it was the truth, that you are the sole creator of every single event and circumstance in your life. Now remove all the emotions and judgments attached to any outcome and just think of the actual outcome itself as if it had been a process or creation that started somewhere and ended with that outcome. Now imagine that you are the architect of that creation.

For me, knowing I am the creator of all is what I am grateful for, not the outcome itself; and if I create something that I then judge as bad I see it as an opportunity to examine my current beliefs, for it is my beliefs that influence my creations.

I understand that removing judgments from an event is difficult, but I will leave you with this following story; and don’t forget to download the short book by Apryl at the end of this post.

A farmer had a horse that one day ran off. After hearing the news, the neighbor came to condole over the loss. The farmer replied “What makes you think it is so terrible?”

A short while later the horse came back, bringing with it a small group of wild horses. After hearing the news the neighbor came to congratulate the farmer. The farmer replied “What makes you think this is so good?”

Not long after, while riding one of the wild horses the farmer’s son was thrown from the horse breaking his leg. After hearing the news, the neighbor came to condole over the incident. The farmer replied “What makes you think this is so bad?”

While the boy was recovering a war broke out, and all able-bodied men were conscripted. Seeing the boy’s broken leg the army left without him.

Here is Apryl Jensen’s short book on gratitude:

http://www.reprogrammingthemind.com/gratitude.pdf

To your success

Dean

I apologize for the title, it may seem a bit extreme but once you read the following you’ll understand why I used it.

Full blown heroin addicts are known to have a $500-700 a day habit. They are able to find this money day in day out whilst fighting the elements of weather, street crime and the law.

Although the means by which they acquire this money is certainly not commendable, one must marvel at their ability to continually find it against all those odds. I’m sure the majority of us would struggle in such an environment.

“But it’s the drug making them do it” I hear you say, and what a great point, because at this point of time, if you did think this you have possibly had a great Ah-ha moment in life, well at least I hope so; let me explain.

You are right; it is the heroin that makes the addict do what he or she does. There is no question about that, but in fact the heroin addict is performing the exact same way as all of us throughout our day, the only difference is their chemical is heroin, and yours are based on your habitual thought processes.

Every thought you have and action you perform throughout the day has an associated chemical release from the brain into your body. This is extremely important, because any chemical, it doesn’t matter whether it is heroin or a chemical produced in your brain, will become addictive if the body receives it too often.

Let me repeat: any chemical, it doesn’t matter whether it is heroin or a chemical produced in your brain, will become addictive if the body receives it too often.

Think of any habitual behaviour you have, whether it is yelling at the kids at the slightest err, reacting in traffic, your reaction when receiving a bill; all these reactions release chemicals, made in your brain, that flow to every living cell in your body.

Think of thoughts you have, worrying about the next mortgage payment, worrying about your kids future, worrying about your health, re-living a moment in the past; all these thoughts release chemicals, made in your brain, that flow to every living cell in your body.

The cells in your body have receptors that receive chemicals, and it doesn’t matter whether the chemical is produced in your brain or from an external source (like heroin), the receptors job is to receive them, and when they stop receiving them they get upset!

So let’s return to the heroin addict. We already established that the behaviour of the addict is driven by the drug itself. But what about you? Can you accept that your everyday behaviour, reactions and thoughts are driven by chemical addictions?

Well, guess what, if you accept this, your well on your way to creating a better life, because indeed it is true, you are a walking chemical producing and chemical receiving organism and all that needs changing from your point of view are the sorts of chemical in circulation.

When you react badly to something, feel the feeling it is producing in your body; that is your body receiving a dose of chemicals! The more you do it, the more your body craves it, and the more the circumstances that trigger this off will appear (The process that creates more circumstances, like a valve that blocks out or lets in, involves other parts of your organic make-up which is explained in our book).

The point here is that when you can associate feelings in your body, that you do not like, to a thought process you have, you have uncovered a possible addiction, which put another way is a habit.

Habits are fuelled by chemical addictions, it is the receptors that become addicted, the receptors send messages to your brain requiring more chemical, the brain responds by searching the memory bank for memories that will trigger off the feelings associated with this chemical, or the brain will instruct the 5 physical senses to seek out circumstances outside of you to trigger of a reaction. That is the cycle of addiction and habit.

To put it bluntly, your results in life are based around your chemical addictions. Those who have the sort of life people envy are also walking chemical factories, but their chemicals are those associated with feelings of success, good health, peace, love and so on. I’m afraid I can’t put it any other way; addictions will continue to produce the same thoughts and the same circumstances in your life day in and day out.

Next time you react to something and it makes you feel bad, ask yourself if this is a common behaviour for you? If it is, your next job is to accept that you have an addiction and replace what ever thoughts you are having with something that gives you a good feeling. A perfect example, my 6th child, all I think about is the way he laughs, and how often he laughs. No matter what bad reaction I have, thinking of him always stops the chemical bombardment in its tracks. Now you try it!

In the world of self help and development, there are two primary schools of thought relating to the creation of desires in our life.

One is that in order to get what you want you must focus on it as often as possible, and at the same time block out any opposing thoughts to your desire.

For instance, if you want to own a nice new house, you should affirm this intention as often as possible using things like pictures, affirmations (i.e. I am living in my dream home now), visualizations, writing down the goal and many other sorts of tools for the sole purpose of bombarding your sub conscious with the new desire.

To make it even more effective you should learn to add emotion to it, thereby creating a more intense realization that you already have it. At the same time any time doubts creep in suggesting that you can not have this desire you need to be aware that the thought is occurring and stop it in its tracks.

However the second school of thought is to make your intention clear to the universe, and then simply let it go. By letting go it means you basically do the opposite to the first school of thought, and that is you do not spend huge amounts of time and energy bombarding your sub conscious with your new desire.

When looking at these two schools of thought there seems to be a contradiction. How can one camp say you need to bombard your sub conscious and the other camp say you should not. The answer lies with one thing and one thing only, and that is your belief that the desire can happen.

This is extremely important because someone who needs to tell themselves something over and over again needs to do this because deep down they simply do not believe it is possible.

Think about it for a second. If you believed that a certain desire, experience, possession etc was very possible in your world, would you need to continuously tell yourself that? The answer is no. Think of it another way; a lot of things are possible in your life but have you achieved them all yet? No, simply because you haven’t had time, but that doesn’t make them impossible to you.

However once you get to goals that are larger than anything you’ve ever attained before there is an instant blockage in your system and the only way to remove this blockage is by force.

By force I mean you have to literally reprogram your beliefs and automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts are what drive you daily and when someone lacks belief in what they can achieve their automatic thought processes match that belief. Using tools like the ones mentioned earlier, such as affirmations and pictures etc are all great at doing that.

So what is really at the core of achieving something is not the goal itself but rather the belief that you can actually attain it.

Reprogramming your mind then is a process of instilling the belief that you can attain something and removing any limiting beliefs.

If on the other hand you have faith in yourself and the process, then all you need to do is make your intention clear and let it go, knowing that in due time it will arrive.

What is essential in either process is removing any need to know ‘how’ it will come. If you keep asking yourself how something is going to come to you, you are simply reinforcing the belief that the goal is out of your reach.

As you attempt to venture into a new world such as success, a world that has so far eluded you but a world that you know exists because you see other’s living it; at some point you are going to have to experience a significant Ah-ha moment; a moment when you become aware of something that is going on within you.

To help explain this I am going to tell you of one of my Ah-ha moments, a moment back in time when I realized I was addicted to negative thinking. That’s right, I realized I was ‘addicted’ to negative thinking and knew there and then that this was something occurring from within which meant I could change it, at the time though I just didn’t know how.

I was in my early stages of learning techniques such as meditation and visualization, and in fact was using an aid called ‘guided visualization’ where you are listening to an instructor guide you through the process of visualizing the things you want in life. It was really great at times, but I also noticed at other times some really shocking pictures or scenes would appear in my mind.

To give you a graphic example, one of the scenes I was visualizing was me sitting in my nice big boat, a cross between a luxury boat and a fishing boat, as I love to fish, anchored in a really nice bay where the fish are plentiful, the sun is warm, the breeze is slight but cool and the sea is calm.

As my mouth widens to a smile, I all of a sudden start seeing other images which seem to come from nowhere; images of my son falling overboard, a shark bumping into the boat, a big wave coming out of nowhere and capsizing us! And I’m thinking to myself, what on earth is going on here? Why am I seeing these horrific pictures?

It wasn’t isolated to just the boat either. Another of my visualizations was I’d be waiting in the bank to speak to my bank manager, and then she would call me in where I’d sit down in front of her and we’d discuss all the new found wealth I had and not only how I made it but what I planned to do with it.

But some of the times I wouldn’t even get into her office, instead while I was waiting some bank robber would come running in and start wielding a knife or a gun! (Do you notice how the negative scenes are very similar to the sorts of things that happen in the movies or on the news?) It only took me a few days of going through this each and every time to realize that somehow I was addicted to these negative thoughts; I knew this because they seemed and ‘felt’ very real.

My brain did not like the new positive thoughts, not because they were positive as such but because the thoughts were themselves releasing new chemicals which the body was not used to. To counteract this, the body needed to command the brain to release chemicals it ‘was’ used to.

Negative thinking releases the same chemicals; it doesn’t matter what the thoughts are about, if they are negative the same cocktail of chemicals are being created in your brains pharmacy and pumped through the blood into every living cell in your body. The more this happens, the more addicted the body becomes to these chemicals and the more displeasure it experiences when you try and replace them with a new chemical, i.e. a chemical associated with success.

So how can you tell if you are addicted to negative thinking?

This is very simple. Close your eyes and visualize something you really want but believe you can not have, and do this for as long as you possibly can. You may not see graphic scenes like I did, it may be that I watched too much TV as a kid; but even subtle feelings and inner voices of doubt will creep in. It doesn’t matter, either way, whether you see things that you don’t like, feel feelings of doubt, or hear your inner voice saying ‘no’ to you, all of these are addictions to negative thinking and beliefs.

So how do you stop being addicted to negative thinking?

Part of the reprogramming of the mind process is the need for you to become aware of yourself. This may sound odd to some, but it’s not. If you did the exercise above than you have already started this process. Becoming aware of your thoughts is the first step in understanding how your whole mind works, and once you understand how it works, you can then change it for the better.

I’ll give you an exercise. The next time you have a shower commentate to yourself the whole time, as if you are broadcasting to the world and explain every single thing you are doing as you shower. This will show you how automated we have become with such things as showering because you’ll find commentating every action very strange to do.

This will also demonstrate how the same automation processes are going on throughout our whole day with almost everything we do from driving a car, to reacting to something we see! This is one of our biggest problems; we are running on autopilot and are not aware of our own thoughts or reactions most of the time.

The more you do this exercise, not just for showering but for many of things you do throughout the day, the more conditioned you’ll become at being aware. Awareness is the first and probably the most significant step to reprogramming your mind for success because awareness alerts you to the negative thought or reaction as it is just starting to happen giving you the ideal time in which to stop it in its tracks!

Habits are formed by the mapping of neural-nets in our brain. The neural-nets join certain associations together to create a belief, habit, idea, thought etc. An example is a basketball, where by in order for you to know that you are looking at a basketball, at some time in your past the associations of orange, round, ball, skin, etc were joined together to create a neural-net map, and this map processes the input from your senses and tells you it’s a basketball.

Habits as we know them, are automatic behaviours and thought processes. For example, smoking is a habit, and so is shaking your head at something you don’t like. The more automated the habit, i.e. the more you do it without conscious awareness, which for most people is most of the time, the stronger the neural-net mapping (or programming as I like to call it) of that habit.

However contrary to popular belief, a habit can be broken in an instant, it just needs a jolt. For example, a smoker who tries to quit may struggle for an eternity without success and then one day something happens that jolts him in such a way that he quits on the spot. I’m sure you know of people who have done this. I know I did. This can also occur for negative habits such as bad spending habits, putting yourself down, negative thoughts and so on.

To demonstrate this, I am going to go back in time to 1966 when The Beatles wrote and recorded Strawberry Fields Forever. It was such a great song that it is still well known today 40 plus years later. However most people, including those that were young back in 1966 are unaware that the song was recorded in two styles and the two styles were then merged.

The story goes like this. The Beatles recorded the song first with guitars and drums, and then second without guitars and drums but rather with stringed instruments like cellos and violins with the help of the producer George Martin. Not knowing which he liked best John Lennon went away and later came back to George and said, “I like both songs, can you merge the two together, can you make the first part guitars and the second part strings?”

The point at which the song splits from guitars to strings is during the second time John sings, ‘Let me take you down ‘cause I’m going to….’. I need to warn you now; once you listen for the point where the song splits from guitars to strings, you will never hear the song the same way again.

And this is my point, and this is what I refer to as a jolt. If you have ever listened to this song before and even liked it, your whole neural net map will be completely rewired in an instant, and you will forever know Strawberry Fields Forever as the song with two parts.

So how about our undesirable habits? In order to remove a bad habit you must in fact replace it with a good habit, this is how the process of neural-net programming works.

The secret then to changing is to be completely aware of the bad habit when it occurs (just like you are now aware of the two parts to Strawberry Fields). When you are aware you are open. Being open is what allows you to change. People with closed minds are unable to change because their Reticular Formation (an organ that is part of the brain), will filter out any information that is not inline with their belief systems.

So if you want to change a bad habit to a good habit, such as negative reactions, negative thoughts, bad spending habits etc, be aware of the bad habit occurring, be open to the possibility you can change it to something far more desirable, and like a jolt the answer or method that will reprogram your neural-nets in an instant will come to you. The level at which the jolt will come will be a direct result of your awareness to your bad habits and the openness of your mind.

Sometimes something as simple as becoming aware that you even have an undesirable habit or behaviour is all the jolt you need……