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.

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The Voice of the Holy Spirit Sang to Me in the Darkness

"Don't write about the Holy Spirit. Don't talk about him. He is too holy, too sacred, yes too dangerous, to even think about."

These words spoken long ago by some now-forgotten preacher still haunt me even five minutes ago as I prepared to start this post. For 20 years I had feared even saying the Holy Spirit's name lest he be offended in some way. Christ's warning about the finality of sinning against the Holy Spirit was taken to heart with a vengeance that amazes me now.

Six years ago this perplexing experience started to change. Let me share an experience that I have never heard anyone speak of before.

Out of boredom I started singing a Christian song I learned at 16 during a young people's weekend at Camp Berkshire in Wingdale, New York. I sang it both in Spanish and English as I walked my golden retriever, Callisto, on his long, long walks through concrete and green in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

It's important that I share the entire lyric as you will understand that it was the vehicle by which the Holy Spirit spoke to me and changed me almost against my will. I must state that I was bored out of my mind and had gotten bored with singing pop tunes on my long, long walks with Callisto. This song, however, sprang to life and wouldn't let go. It had a will of its own. I'd stop singing it and it reasserted itself.

It's a wonderful, wonderful life when you're with the Lord above./ It's a wonderful, wonderful life when you're saved by his love./ There's a joy that you never can tell and great peace with the Lord above./ As I walk with the Lord in my heart there's a song./ It's a wonderful, wonderful life. -- Author Unknown

Week after week prior to 2005 I had been singing this song out of habit. I'd sing other songs, secular songs, but no other spiritual songs at all. In late 2004 or early 2005 I noted something was happening or had already happened. Without explanation I had a new-found interest in rising early and spending 30 minutes reading a chapter or two of the gospels in the New Testament, e.g., Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I had no time to pray so I prayed on the way to work for 15-20 minutes.

After a few weeks of this I thought maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to attend church again. I hadn't attended church at all in over 15 years. For some mysterious reason I actually enjoyed going to church. More importantly I enjoyed reading the Bible, the writings of Ellen White and other Christan books. I played no Christian music CDs even though I probably had one or two in some bottom storage box--who knows where in my home. The new songs I sang in church, praise songs, were all I needed for my new phase.

Then it dawned on me that I had been touched by the Holy Spirit, almost without asking for it. I must share with you that I never stopped believing in God even though my impression of God was and still is imperfect and skewed by life's experiences. Out of guilt and to avoid psychological discomfort only, I  had continued for 20 long years to repeat the following words on most mornings as I drove to work:

If you then who are earthly know how to give good things to your children how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to you if you ask him. Luke 11:13

These words were the only contact I had with God and with the religion of my parents and I was not about to give it up just in case there really was something to the God experience, salvation, heaven, eternal life, etc. It was how I convinced myself that I still held onto the only lifeline I still had in case these were more than just pleasant words written 2,000 years ago.

Three months after this change started occurring in me I was awakened in my darkened room at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. by a voice singing inside my  head. It awakened me from a deep sleep with the clarity of its melody. I had not sang these words in over 25 years. The voice grew louder and  louder and the sweetness of the words almost moved me to tears. These are the words the voice sang [I am translating from Spanish as the voice was in the tongue of the first five years of my life:]

The Shepherd loves his sheep with a paternal love. The Shepherd loves his flock with a love that cannot compare. The Shepherd loves his other sheep that are scattered and lost. He looks for them with great concern wherever they may be be.

Down on my knees I found myself thanking God for the first and only time I had ever experienced such a phenomenon. I was actually hearing God's voice and in song. This time I knew something was happening, had happened, that had never happened before--at least not like this. This was the God experience and it took me decades of my life to fall into it. This was not some transitory emotion. This really grabbed me and wouldn't let me go. This was God taking me by the hand and  leading me very much like how I walked with my dear Callisto and led him on his daily walks.

Life has been full of temptations, disappointments and yes, shocks to my system, for six years now. But what else can I do?

When you have been touched by God it is for life. You just don't turn around and go anywhere else.

If you've never been touched by God, repeat the lyrics of my childhood song about how this is a wonderful, wonderful life. May God also touch you and never stop touching you throughout your life.

Financially Independent in Seven Years: a Divine Strategy

Five years ago a book I read defined financial independence as owning your home outright by paying off the mortgage years ahead of schedule. The now-forgotten author counselled eliminating needless expenses, as well as semi-needless expenses such as buying a new wardrobe every season. She even envisioned a near future saving strategy of borrowing new music legally almost free of charge. This now exists through Pandora.com. I find music--lots of it--to be priceless to avoid stress and a host of other problems. Pandora costs $10 a month, let's me access every song I've ever loved and saves me oodless of cash by not needing to buy CDs.

I too have resolved to be "financially independent" in seven years using as many cost-cutting strategies as possible.

A spiritual formula to achieve this is as follows:

1. Have faith in God.
2. The "impossible" is meaningless as far as God is concerned.
3. One responds best to vision if it is "clear, crisp and concise."
4. There is power in prayer. 1
_______

1 "Southern Tidings" p. 25. November 2010

Creating an Ideal World: Adventist Futurism

What would an ideal world be like? How would you bring it about? Before anything can be achieved it has to be envisioned first.

Computers, spacecraft, the Internet--the list goes on and on--first had to be conceived before they could be invented and perfected. As unlikely as it seems, had Jules Verne never written From the Earth to the Moon (1865) which depicts a rocket launch from somewhere in Florida, no one would have gotten the idea to make that vision come to pass a hundred years later.

What is not being done now that could improve the world beyond recognition? There must be something that either has to be added or removed before a new reality could take place. We could wait for it to come into existence on its own. While not impossible, perhaps implementing a think tank of sorts to bring about an ideal reality might achieve more than simply waiting for something that may take millennia, or perhaps may never take place.

We should pool our best minds from every nation and work towards an approach to perfecting reality in as little time as possible.

I'm reminded of the vision of Isaac Asimov in his Foundation series (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation.) In order to avoid a long decay into barbarism, efforts were implemented to shorten the decay of the galactic empire to only 1,000 years. Why can't something similar be done to solve the major problems of our present reality?

What are some of the greatest challenges to an improved reality? Eliminating war, poverty and hunger are the first things that come to mind. Others might be providing education, medical care and a place to live to everyone on our planet. The third phase would be addressing environmental problems, managing natural phenomena such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Finally, the greatest gift we could give our world reality would be to take measures to move beyond our sometimes fragile planet and seed the known universe with our people, our technology and our dreams.

One possible approach might involve a little-known group of people. It's as if they had almost been kept a secret from the rest of the world for some grand vision of enhancing reality. Adventists are some of the most educated people in the world because they have higher education and progress as one of their cardinal principles. Adventists may very well be some of the most wealthy people in the world when you factor in of all their collective capital. Next to the Catholic church Adventism is the richest church in existence. This is not a widely-known reality. It would be easier for a future-oriented think tank to rise out of the Adventist Futurists than from any other traditional body.

Tap into the unknown power of your mind and literally create an ideal world.

We're here for a special God-given purpose: to better the world.

For a related post please consult Adventist Futurism.

Future Sin

I don't know about you, but the more I think of sin as a concept, of past sins, unconfessed sins, theoretical sins, etc., the more I want to sin. I'm even taking a risk by writing about sin. Even when you do sin it is better to confess your sin to God and then quickly move on. Why cry over spilt milk, as it were? Why frown about the vase that broke and cannot be repaired? Pick up the broken pieces, throw them out and then move on with your day, and with your life. Of course, I am not saying there is no such thing as sin. It would be nice if that were the case. It is obvious that there is something wrong in one's behavior from time to time. However, it is not healthy to dwell on the imperfections of sin.

Do more than just put it out of your mind. If anyone starts talking about Sin or sinning just excuse yourself and remove yourself at once from their presence. That is unless they have asked you to help them because they are weighed down by the burden of sin. You would be sinning again if you were so unconcerned about a fellow human being who is asking you for help.

There are so many worthwhile and useful things you could be doing with your life than dwelling on your sins, past or future. It is better to focus on a more loving version of yourself, a more grateful one, a more ideal one which will, hopefully, bring you closer to that reality.

Even better yet is to focus on Christ, his words, other ideal realities and these exalted realities may very well become your own reality, as well.

What to do with Sin? Leave it alone, in both word and deed. Take a breath of fresh, sinless air, and start enjoying your life 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.