Photo by v2osk on Unsplash
Sounds hard to believe doesn’t it? Well, you can test it in a moment.
As you know, everything we create, do, don’t do, achieve or don’t achieve first begins as a thought.
The quality of our thinking determines the quality of our actions and influences our outcomes.
What we pay attention to with our thoughts grows, no matter whether positive negative or both.
The positive will grow if we focus on it. For instance, if we focus positively on becoming fitter, we will, because we’ll take the required action.
The negative will grow if we focus on it. For instance, if we focus on the negative feelings of how getting fitter will inconvenience us and put us out of our comfort zone, we’re less likely to enjoy it or do it.
If we’re stuck thinking both positively and negatively about something, not much happens! For example, if we’re stuck between the idea of fitness benefits and the dread of the experience, we’re likely to do nothing other than feel guilty etc.
If we had a formula that we could use always for our thinking, that would help us achieve whatever we chose to do, how useful would that be?
As an executive coach I help my client’s use a very memorable formula to think ‘on manual’, instead of ‘on automatic’.
Automatic thinking leads us to follow fear habits and ignorance, instead of applying courage, better practice and learning.
Automatic thinking can lead to error, accident and inaction, or wrong action.
For example, if you were to repeat the word ‘silk’ four times – silk, silk, silk, silk and then tell me what cows drink, if you say milk, as most people do, you’d be wrong! That’s automatic thinking.
So, to give power to your brilliant thinking, which must be on manual, not automatic, make sure you apply this formula:
Positive - Useful - Realistic - Effective
Or PURE.
Positive – remember that what we focus on grows, so don’t waste time focussing on the negative, other than to get out of its way! Think “yes I can find a way”, not “I can’t do this”.
Useful – make sure the thinking is useful and moves you forward, not staying stuck. So, those futile worst scenario questions that you can never answer, or those thoughts that simply restate the dilemma – don’t think like that! That’s called worrying – not thinking!
Realistic – make sure it’s not just fantasy or unachievable in a reasonable time frame. Make sure the thought has the potential to manifest what is needed or wanted. For example, how realistic is it to buy a lottery ticket to solve your financial challenge?
Effective – make sure the thought will stand a good chance of achieving the goal or taking you closer to it and can be actioned. Think “In the meantime I’ll negotiate with my creditors to give me more time, whilst I put together a plan to get help to achieve the goal” – successful entrepreneurs do that all the time!
Try it now.
Choose a problem or a challenge you’d like to resolve and think about resolving it by choosing thoughts that have all, not just some, of the formula PURE.
Now choose a new way of looking at a negative judgement you’ve made about yourself, through your PURE eyes.
Now try it on any topic that you’ve found to be negative or not worthy or not even important, through your PURE eyes.
What would happen if you made it a practice to, before you decide or act on anything, you ran your thinking through your PURE eyes?
Let me know what you think about this.
(I published a version of this first on Medium)
