Block Negative Thoughts with Positive Ones

Daily Match in Your Mind: Solutions

Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) pop up in one's mind with annoying ease. Automatic Positive Thoughts (APTs) don't intrude as much as you would like them to.

On a moment-by-moment basis ANTs need to be challenged and immediately replaced with APTs. By doing so continuously Automatic Negative Thoughts will lose their power.

Automatic Positive Thoughts, as they are encouraged, will become more frequent and will outnumber their negative counterparts.

Examples:

"I feel lousy today." Replace it with: "I feel great today."

"I hate when it rains." Replace it with: "Enjoy the rain. Flowers and trees will thrive because of it." Or: Blue skies and bright sun will peek through later on."

"I can't deal with this problem anymore." Replace with: "It's important that I find a solution. Bad situations need to be challenged and eliminated soon."
Write down the negative thought. Cross it off and replace it wigh a positive one.

This really works. Successful people do it all day long.

Share this approach with a friend or family member who tries to infect you with their negative thoughts about others, about you or about themselves. Do so with the proper tact. Realize that when a person is really hurting it may not be appropriate to challenge bad thoughts with good thoughts. If they come to you for help you have an open door.

If the negative thought is directed at you it's important that you challenge it audibly, if practical, or inaudibly by barely moving your lips or by saying it very deliberately in your mind. Hear yourself say the positive replacement clearly in your mind.

Do not let anyone infect you, or others you value, with their verbal poison. Take the positive antidote immediately.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

Power to Create Galaxies Is at Your Disposal

Only God can create galaxies with his omniscient and omnipotent mind. He has this power within himself and it is unborrowed. However, the promise does exist that we "can do all things through him [Christ] who strengthens [us.]" Phil. 4:13 [italics mine] Notwithstanding that the actual context refers to being content with abundance or lack of it, this text is often cited as a stand alone text referring to being able to surmount obstacles and being able to live a victorious Christian life, as well.

Additionally, did Jesus not promise that "if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can say to this mountain be lifted up and transported to the heart of the seas and it will be done." Gospel of Matthew. Some say that this mountain is symbolic of obstacles and such. Well that may be. However, nothing is impossible for God. Why could not a literal mountain be transported into the heart of the seas? Stranger things have happened in our modern world. Did not a seemingly small Enola Gay aircraft deliver an even smaller device which destroyed two major Japanese cities with tragic results? How seemingly impossible would that have appeared to people living even 100 years before such a thing occurred to say nothing of those living 1000 years ago.

Several times a day Phil. 4:13 comes to mind, but it has come to lose some of its power by frequent repetition until I focused on each word and realized the amazing significance of each word. All worlds were created by Christ's power. We are promised that that same Christ, who is very God, can empower us to do all things through his limitless power.

Is there any reason why we at some point in our future experience will be prevented by this boundless power to create galaxies of our own invention? The universe is infinite. It is suggested by some theorists that we are a part of a multiverse which is also infinite. Each child of God can theoretically be enabled to create galaxies through the creative power of God.

In this mortal life the only ability we are granted is to create these future galaxies through the power of the sanctified imagination. One curious idea has suggested itself as I started this post. What if we already have this God-given power at our disposal and don't realize it? As we peer through telescopes that our God-given intelligence has enabled us to design, might we not be creating by the power of thought the very galaxies we are seeing in ever-increasing profusion and variety? God shares everything with us: life, mind, free will. Why put limits on what he is capable of sharing with us, his children?

The flip side of this wonderful God-given ability, is unfortunately at our disposal as well: the power to uncreate and to destroy. How else to account for the disasters and gross imperfections that come into play with ever-increasing frequency? Man and his free will are presently undoing the perfection that God blessed us with in creating our perfect reality. When planes fall from the sky we need not blame this catastrophe on an almost invincible demon, or even put the blame on God himself. These disasters happen because somewhere on Earth there are individuals who will these things into existence. Humanity is its own worst enemy.

Humankind can, through the enabling power of God, also be its own best friend and an agent for good. Why stop at just good? Why not redesign what is apparently broken? Everything is possible for him who believes. Start believing and through the wondrous power of God, start creating your first galaxy today.

Ellen G. White and the Positive Thinking Movement

Christian approaches to the role of the mind and the power of positive thinking may seem like odd bedfellows to some. Nevertheless, Norman Vincent Peale (Power of Positive Living,) Robert Schuller (Move Ahead With Possibility Thinking ,) and Joel Osteen (Your Best Life Now) are examples of past and present Christian ministers who brought this approach to large numbers of people.

The secular world also has its gurus that promote positive thinking. Louise Haye (You Can Heal you Life Now), Wayne Dyer (Inspiration : your Ultimate Calling) and of course, Rhonda Byrne (The Secret).

Without having read Schuller's work I became aware of his popular book in the early 70s as I was canvassing door to door with Adventist literature. One of the couples I met spoke to me enthusiastically about the power of positive thinking. I had already been thinking along those lines although I cannot pinpoint how I arrived at such an attitude. I know I believed deeply in positive thinking as I had just converted the year before to Christianity and everything seemed suddenly sunnier in spite of the imperfections of young adult life continuing in my own life.

Actually, come to think of it, a year before the encounter with the lady who was a Robert Schuller fan, I had taken part in The Positive Way at Atlantic Union College. Most of it was based on Glenn Coon's system of claiming bible promises. The other significant component was Ellen G. White's Christ Object Lessons. However, because of limited free time due to school work it was not actually studied in the course even though it was handed out as one of the seminar materials.

I lost my original paperback copy years ago and I recently purchased a hard cover version of this excellent book. I read it for a bit then became sidetracked with other spiritual books, and the greatest side tracker of them all, the Bible.

In Ellen White's time the positive thinking movement, or the New Thought Movement, had its beginnings. I know that because contemporaries of Ellen White's are the ones mentioned in Rhonda Byrne's The Secret. One example might be William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932) who wrote and published Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World. Three of its tenets that can be found in Ellen White's work are the following: 1) divinely attuned thought is a positive force for good, 2) all disease is mental in origin and 3) right thinking has a healing effect.

My recent fascination with wanting to read Christ's Object Lessons stems from trying to find these and other New Thought movement influences in Ellen White's work, especially Christ's Object Lessons. Of course, she focuses on Christ's parables and not just on positive thinking for the sake of positive thinking.

Recently I reached for Christ's Object Lessons again and am looking forward to studying its life-affirming chapters because of a fascination with how Ellen White approaches the positive thinking lifestyle.