Shifting Your Conditioning: Choosing Your Emotional Domain

Yesterday I asked you to rewrite a thought associated with your negative conditioning to make it more positive. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your thought pattern will change. It means you are now aware of the subconscious pattern that has been influencing your life – what you believe to be true. A belief is what you think even if you have no evidence to substantiate it. Beliefs are reinforced by emotions associated with a thought and we look for ways to reinforce our beliefs. We ignore anything that contradicts our beliefs. Now you are going to change a thought and associate other emotions with it and look for ways to reinforce this thought over time.

Having a statement that you say to yourself can be powerful – but only if two things happen – you really believe what you are saying and have some emotion behind it. Once you have an emotionally charged statement you say to yourself over and over, it can’t help but shift your mindset and therefore your actions and results.

For illustrative purposes, I am going to use my example of “I don’t have enough.” This could come into play when thinking about not just money, but enough experience, skills, courage, friends, peace, connections, etc. It can be a negative, self-defeating program running in the background of your mind influencing the way you approach everything. It’s your mindset. When considering the emotional domain, notice what feelings surface as you think of these words. Don’t judge feelings as good or bad.

For me, emotions like fear, defeat, terror, panic surface. How do they serve me? They keep me protected from danger but also can hold me back from things I don’t want to do. At it’s extreme these emotions can paralyze me into non-action. Or they can incite me into action to avoid these feelings – but again, the negative feelings are still running the show.

If I change this phrase to “I have abundance,” this has such a different meaning and feeling. When I dwell on this phrase, feelings like safety, security, feeling full, all surface. I’m not as worried. I need to really believe this is the case, not just recite it to myself or tell myself to feel a certain way. You cannot force yourself to feel certain things – only allow and create the conditions for different feelings to surface.

What helps with this next piece is to visualize and notice all the ways I truly do have abundance like my health, money in the bank, supportive relationships, work I love, etc. When I focus on naming things that are really true, and truly appreciate them, this act associates this thought with these emotions solidifying the conditioning around it. This process requires repetition and choosing to express certain feelings. Your mind got conditioned over many years so it will take practice to shift.

Adding expression, and even music or images (drawings – words or color) can also help with accessing positive emotions. Dwell on your new mantra and enjoy!

Ultimately, the fastest way to release old conditioning is to get really clear about what you are feeling and then to clear the emotions that are negative – detox. Some of this detox is actually a physical process as thoughts and emotions are connected to the body. We are going to continue with the physical domain tomorrow.

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