If You Want To Be Someone Else, Just Change Your Mind!

 

Have you ever had the thought that you wish you could change who you are? Maybe you’re stuck in a going nowhere relationship, or your job no longer satisfies you but you need the paycheck and feel there’s no way out. Or maybe you are not happy and wish you could be happy, or you dream of living a more luxurious lifestyle than you presently do. Perhaps you’d like to feel excited about every day of life or experience better health, or maybe you just don’t like yourself.

I imagine everyone alive has had the experience of daydreaming about a change in their life or in them. But most often they accept that it is just a daydream and cannot ever become real – like the fairytales we heard as kids. While it is true you cannot change everything, you can change who you are. And it’s simple to do, but not that easy for most to implement.

You’ve probably heard many statements about the power of your thoughts. Thoughts really are powerful, so powerful that they create every one of your life experiences. How can this be? It is due to the scientific fact that all thoughts are energy, and once energy is created it never dies. That means that whenever you think a thought, the energy with that thought radiates outward to attract and create experiences about that thought, whether negative or positive. Here’s an example.

How many times have you worried about money: not enough in your bank account to pay your bills; not enough left in your checking account to buy that outfit you want; not enough to go out this weekend, not enough to pay off your credit card; not enough, not enough, not enough. So guess what happens in your life? That’s right, not enough! If you continually think about not having enough money, you surely will experience not enough money. However, if you changed your thoughts to something like this – “I’m grateful for the money I have to pay the bills I can and am trusting God to supply the rest,” or “I’ll buy that outfit soon, when the timing is right,” you shift the negative thoughts of not enough to positive thoughts that you are thankful for what you have and are creating more. That may seem silly to you, but the words you use reflect the thoughts you are thinking, which create your behavior and subsequent situations and experiences that appear in your life. It’s a scientific fact.

Is there something you really, really want? Like a bigger house or newer car, or perhaps a better job that has less of a commute and more pay, or maybe a promotion? Or maybe you dream of going to Hawaii for an awesome vacation. But here’s what usually happens. You think about the bigger house or newer car and immediately tell yourself all the reasons you cannot have it: you don’t make enough money; your credit score isn’t high enough; you’d have to sell your present house first and since houses aren’t selling quickly now it will probably not happen, and so on. What you’ve actually done is stop your dream from ever happening by introducing negative thoughts of why it cannot happen. Same thing with the job request. Perhaps you think of all the people who could be chosen before you for that promotion – your perception of course – and the fact that people are losing jobs right and left so how could you ever land a new job with more pay and less commuting time? Again, you refuted your first request with the negative thoughts of why it cannot happen. So you can see how easy it is to become your own worst enemy.

Sister Hazel sings the song “If You Want To Be Someone Else, Change Your Mind.” This is the secret of becoming who you want to be – changing your thoughts that pop into your mind. Most individuals don’t believe they have the power to change who they are, so they remain as they are according to the mold they’ve slipped into. Psychologists tell us that many individuals have low self-worth, so they don’t believe in their own power to make changes. For others it’s just too much trouble to change anything - it does take work to do it.

What it comes down to are thoughts – what you focus on continuously. Here’s how it works. Okay, you cannot see any way for you to take a vacation to Hawaii – none. The money isn’t there and perhaps you are way too busy to take time off. So you view it as unobtainable and chop the dream up without giving it a chance to expand into reality. What if you continuously envisioned what it would be like to take that vacation, to walk on the beach and feel the warm sand beneath your feet? What if you pictured orchid leis around your neck as you watched the native girls dancing with their hula skirts swinging, and palms trees swaying gently in the background? If you continually focused on these feelings, some day you’d be there. The only thing that can block your dream from coming to you is you!

Let’s take this a step further. What if you don’t like yourself? Are you too shy, too uneducated, too fat, too messy, too argumentative, too bossy, too unkind, too controlling or too lazy? Then do something about it! If you’re too shy take a speaking training so you’ll have more confidence. Take classes or read books to educate yourself. If overweight, change your diet and begin exercising. If you find yourself messy, argumentative, unkind, controlling or lazy, then do some inner work to release these negative habits and replace them with neatness, a listener, kind, a team player, and a productive being. Almost anything can be changed when the person is determined to do it. You see, it always comes back to choice, your choice. 

I was always a shy, anxious person until a decade ago when I felt internally pushed to step out and take a speaking training. I really didn’t want to do that, nor did I think I could, but the internal persistence that was telling me to do this wouldn’t let up, so I did it for my own peace. Was it hard? Sure it was. But once I did it and began to speak, I realized I could do it and it wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. I realized it was my own self-perceived fear that had been stopping me, but by stepping over the fear I had triumphed over the challenge. My shyness disappeared, I became outgoing and confident, and the anxiety I had felt in the past gradually went away as I understood my own worth. It was a major life lesson for me as I learned that if I thought differently my outcomes were better.

So think about who you’d like to be? What could you do and be if you got rid of fear? Could you become someone famous, or a speaker or author? Could you become confident and compassionate and full of love? Could you flow with life rather than resisting everything and trying to force things to happen your way? Could you step away from the job you’re in and pursue what your heart wants you to do? How would you like to see yourself in a life you’d like to live? What can you create for yourself? It all begins with your thoughts. Whatever you think about creates your life experiences, so pay attention to those all-powerful thoughts that are right now creating your next life experience. If you want to be someone else, simply change your mind!