It turned out there were hundreds of councellors near me. All offering the same variety of services to help overcome anxiety, depression, panic attacks, loneliness and so on. It was a bewildering array of therapies and counselling on offer. What I now realise is that by becoming clear about what I wanted from talking therapy where I wanted to get to then it was much easier to find a counsellor who could do this. People who understood how to help others get to where they want to go.
It also was very important to me that the counsellors I chose were women, who are often much more empathetic and sensitive than men. I wanted someone who could listen without interrupting, someone who would not judge me, because I hadn’t been judged in the past. I wanted someone who would have experienced enough to understand how to reduce anxiety and depression as much as possible.
It is a common experience with many people to have experienced anxiety when acfaced with many changes during a lifetime, so it was very important to me that the counsellor I chose was someone who would be aware of how to deal with this, without over protecting us. We tend to become too worried about being judged – in the extreme that we do not leave any choices to the client. This can cause immense suffering. I wanted someone who would help me to let go of all that and to feel safe, but not too safe that we end up withdrawing from people.
The main thing I sought from this counselling and therapy was to feel better. It wasn’t so much a desire to feel better as to feel able to manage my life more effectively. It also was a desire to stop feeling guilty about things, or wishing things could be different. Sometimes, when I look back on my life I am glad I had the experience of going to therapy, even though I don’t see how it is relevant to my life now. It was necessary for me to confront these issues and it was important for me to know that therapy could help me to do this.
The key point is, is that it is very easy to have a belief that you should not feel bad about a particular situation. In fact it is so easy to have this belief that many people do not question it. But in doing so, you are keeping yourself from moving closer to your dreams.
We must all make a conscious effort to question our beliefs. In fact most of us probably do not do this 100%. There are plenty of situations in our lives where we make snap judgments about someone or something. And in these situations we are usually operating from fear. Fear of the future, fear of other people’s reactions to us, fear of not being good enough, fear of making mistakes. But when you’re under fire, it is very important that you fire your thoughts. We all know this and yet it happens often. When you fire your thoughts, you also fire your feelings, so you can get to the truth. You can get to the truth without the fear. Fear is a very dangerous emotion. The truth is that dreams are made in the present. They are born in the present, not in your future. The present is where we are, living in the moment, not in some distant future when you might be alive.
Now that you are aware of this, you can then start to work on changing your thoughts. How? The trick is to only think about things that are relevant, happy and loving. Only thinking about things that are like that will attract situations in your life that reflect this. Changing your thoughts is like changing your oil. You need to pump it up. And pump it up, you need to think about thoughts that are uplifting, uplifting thoughts. It is not possible to have uplifting thoughts if someone is accusing you of doing something wrong. You need to be strong in the present moment. Only when your thoughts are uplifting can you have a future that is bright. By constantly thinking about the past or future, you are going to bring back that feeling of feeling bad, and you will never achieve your dreams.
“You should think of life as a movie and your thoughts as actors. Just like in a movie, the character you are portraying is going to move your emotions, too. So should you think of thoughts that will help you move your emotions along. Your thoughts should move you along in life. So should you.”
This is a quotation by Dr. Wayne Dyer, and I want you to remember to only play your thoughts like a movie. Your thoughts are actors in your life, and they need to move you emotionally in order to move you spiritually. And the way to do that is to think thoughts that are uplifting, like happiness.
“What you resist persists.” – Socrates
You have to remember that even the thoughts you think are, at times, just thoughts. If you think that you should kill yourself, well, that is just a thought that you should kill yourself.
If you think you are a terrible person and you think that you are a bad person, well, all those thoughts are just thoughts. If you think that you should be a good person, well, that is just a thought that you should be a good person.
These are just thoughts, and like everything else in life, you have to remember to just think thoughts that are uplifting and should be moving you forward in life.
We all have fears, we all have hurts, we all have things that we want to move away from us, we all have things that we want to move forward, we all have things that we want to stay where we are, we all have things that we think we should do to move forward, we all have things that we think we should not do to move forward. There are many things in life where we all tend to think certain things, and those thoughts should be thoughts that we should not be thinking.
So remember, it is all in the mind, we need to feed our minds with thoughts that should move us forward, into the next moment.
