Wings of Change – Change Your Life Articles

Many might find it shocking that meditation can be used to boost confidence. The truth is that meditation can be used to strengthen any emotion or skill.

When you meditate, you bring a great amount of awareness into your mind. In the moment of meditation you hold the power to decide exactly what your life is all about. The past and the future melt away, and all that’s left is you. So when you actively decide to boost confidence, you will!

Bringing Past Feelings Into The Present

The first thing you should do is familiarize yourself with the feelings associated with confidence. Take a moment to recall different times in your life that you felt especially confident. How exactly did you feel?

For example, maybe you remember a time when you entered a sports competition. You trained hard and you believed in yourself. How did you feel right before you started?

Let’s say that you now have to lead a group of people at work. You’re feeling a little scared about it because all of the details are not falling into place as you’d like. Meditate on the feelings of confidence. Bring the positive emotions from past successes into your present and approach your problem with those positive feelings instead.

Picturing The Future

In order to strengthen your meditation skills to encourage greater confidence, it may help to picture future circumstances turning out in your favor. When you sit down to meditate, be very detailed in your visions. Use the confident feelings you know you have and place them into the situations you’re envisioning.

This activity is a good idea to try if you feel that negative emotions are overtaking you. However, for the most part you should be concentrating on the present moment and taking life one breath at a time.

Staying In The Now

Sometimes you’ll feel negative emotions, the opposite of confidence, when you’re overwhelmed with problems. This is when it’s especially important to stay in the now.

When you meditate on each breath and focus on the present moment, you’ll realize how very simple life is among the complexity. You’ll be able to calm down. With a calm head you can then reach for the confidence you seek.

Remember these tips as you meditate:

• Find a place where you can be alone with your thoughts.
• Sit in an upright position with good posture.
• Fight the urge to take a nap or go to bed.
• Take deep inhales and long exhales.
• Pause in between breaths.
• Repeat a mantra or affirmation to yourself as you breathe in and out.

Meditating Often

Meditation is an art that takes practice. Just like anything else, when you practice often you’ll get better at it. You shouldn’t just use the art of meditation when you feel that you need it. Strive to make meditation a part of your every day routine!

Soon you’ll find that you won’t have to try as hard to reach your meditative state. Understanding and confidence will become part of your life and you’ll feel a greater power within.

It’s easy to talk and read about meditation, but it’s quite another experience to do it.

In theory it sounds like such an easy and delightful practice. The truth is that you’re likely to get bored at first and you’ll probably make excuses about whether or not you really have the time for it. Strive to remain disciplined and keep up with your practice. When you do, you’ll experience a true inner peace and confidence like never before.

Worrying about what the future holds is one of the most common fears. Often times you’re anticipating the worst while, at the same time, realizing that a life in fear is not very pleasant at all.

Fortunately there are certain strategies you can use to conquer your fear of the unknown.

Try implementing some of these techniques to conquer your fears:

1. Think about the outcomes. When you’re approaching an unknown situation, it helps to make a list of all the possible outcomes. Some of the results may be good and some not so good, but feeling like you have just a little foreknowledge about the future will help to ease your fears.
2. Clear the mind. Make an active effort to clear your mind. One of the reasons you feel fear is that you’re worried that something bad is going to happen. This could be because of a situation from your past that you’ve projected into the future. You need to take these thoughts off the table and approach your fears with a clear head.
3. Take positive steps forward. It sounds easy, but it may be difficult to put into practice. Strive to visualize everything turning out positively. If you concentrate more on the positive aspect, you can actually turn your fear into excitement.
4. Study fear. Fear has a real purpose in appropriate situations. The experience of fear makes your heart rate rise and you’re better able to escape threatening situations. However, humans have built many unnecessary and non-life threatening fears. Once you realize that these types of fears serve no purpose, you’ll be stronger for it.
5. Talk it through. You might be feeling alone with your fears. It helps to talk through your problems with someone close to you. Perhaps it’ll help to discuss your fears with someone who has experienced a similar situation. Just knowing you’re not alone can ease your fear, even if the person doesn’t have any especially helpful advice to give.
6. Start small. If you’re afraid of the unknown in a general sense, starting small will help reduce your fear. Instead of tackling a seemingly huge insurmountable task, just try doing something small first. Break out of your comfort zone for a little bit and try something new you’ve never tried before.

Present Thinking

When your thoughts get caught up in the future, whether it’s the near future or the distant future, it clouds your current situation. If you’re especially fearful, take a step back and focus on what is going on in the present moment.

Your present thinking automatically allows you to take things one step at a time. If you’re currently doing the laundry, for example, the only thing you should focus on is getting stains out or putting clothes in the dryer – or positive things you look forward to. Brush other worries away and live in the here and now.

This isn’t to say you should never think about the future. When you think about the future, do it with a clear head and positive thoughts and without letting the fears bury you.

Following these strategies can alleviate your fear of the unknown and bring you a life full of enthusiasm for the future instead of fear. What a difference this can make! And there’s no better time to start than the present. Go for it!

It seems that everything you’ve ever learned is about preparing yourself for a better future. It’s easy to get so caught up in the future that you lose the ability to enjoy the life you’re living right now.

The Power Of The Present

The first thing you should do to take action toward a better life is to realize the power that the present moment holds. There are different ways you can truly come to this realization, but the most popular and widely accepted method is meditation.

Meditation allows you to clear your mind. It’s refreshing to focus on the present moment when you find the time to sit down and relax without any worries about the past or future.

This personal reflection time will allow you to sort out your inner thoughts. On the flipside, take note of the number of times your mind tries to distract you from the present moment. You’ll be surprised to see just how many times your mind steals the present moment from you, in order to dwell on the past or future.

Enjoying The Journey

Your journey is all you have. Your goals are important, but it’s the path you take toward your goals that yield many fruits. You must be willing to enjoy your life and live consciously, even if you haven’t yet reached your goals.

If you have a lofty goal, such as becoming a doctor or the CEO of a large company, realize that it will take much planning and years of experience. Once you reach your goal, you may feel fulfilled, but your life mustn’t be unhappy and miserable until you get there!

You can remain happy by concentrating on the present and enjoying the journey. As you make positive progress towards your goal, you’ll know that you’re always one step closer.

Envisioning Your Future Self

While you should spend a great deal of time enjoying the present moment, you can add to your happiness by envisioning your future self.

Reflect on the feelings associated with the successful completion of your goals. Think about the traits you’ll exhibit when you have the life you desire. Now bring those traits into your present.

If you’re studying to be a doctor, you’re working long days for little or no pay. You’re studying at all hours with little sleep. You might feel almost tortured. That’s not the desired life you dreamt of having!

This is when you should be proud of the steps you’ve taken so far. After all, what you’re learning now will shape your future, so you might as well approach today with joyful gratitude!

Live The Life You Want Now

Whether you maintain complete focus on your ultimate goals or not, it’s important to live the life you desire right now. You don’t know how many days you’ve been allotted on this earth, and you owe it to yourself to make the most of them!

Keep these tips in mind:

• Even on busy days, take at least some time for yourself
• Don’t waste your time on people who don’t believe in you and your abilities
• Adopt a “glass is half full” mentality

Most importantly, you need to believe in yourself. Some people are literally afraid of success. They’ll put off action toward their dreams indefinitely because they fear success and fear that they’re incapable.

You mustn’t fall into this negative pattern. Don’t waste your time on dead ends. Instead, take action, learn your lessons, and enjoy the journey!

Deep down you know that there is simply nothing you can do to change the past. No matter how many times you wish you’d done something differently, the past will always remain the past.

You must find a way to, once and for all, be done with your regretful feelings. When you continue to fret over the past, you allow negative feelings to consume more and more of your life. Once you’ve put a stop to it, you can think positively again and your future will be brighter.

Getting Caught Up In The Past

It’s easy to get caught up in the past. Nobody’s perfect and, no matter how hard you try, you’ll still continue to make mistakes. It’s how you handle the mistakes that will make the true difference in your life.

If you’ve made a mistake or suffered a tragedy in the recent past, don’t allow the tragedy to replay in your head over and over. You’ll continue to relive the negative feels as if you were continually going through the tragedy. No one deserves this! Instead, you have two choices, you can actively work on correcting your mistake, or you can let the feelings go because they’re not helpful to you in that moment.

Learn From Your Mistakes

There are lessons to be learned in every mistake you make no matter how minor it might be. The goal is to work on discovering what these lessons are.

When negative feelings surround you regarding your past, focus on the lesson learned. Maybe you would have never learned that lesson without the mistake. And now that you’ve gained this wisdom you can avoid making that mistake again in the future.

You can take everything one step further and do more with the lessons you’ve learned. Perhaps you can raise awareness by telling others about your experience. If you can help others avoid the same mistakes, you’ll be doing something great for the world. It’ll also help you feel better about the situation.

Avoid Resentment

You need to do your best to avoid resentment and all negative emotions. Resentment is a poisonous emotion that can go out of control if you don’t deal with it. You’ve probably heard of people who have had a falling out with a family member and resentment keeps them apart for the better part of their lives. Think about all the good times they’ve missed out on because of this bitterness!

Let It Go

Depending on what you’ve gone through, there may be a mourning period associated with your situation, but you’ll eventually need to let it go. Since you know that nothing can change the past, letting go can prove to be very liberating.

When you let it all go, you learn to forgive yourself and forgive others. Forgiveness is such an important thing to promote in your life. It allows you to grow as a person and blossom forward to enjoy all that life has to offer. You weren’t meant to sit around mourning the past no matter how tragic it’s been for you.

How Negative Thinking Hurts You

When it comes down to it, sometimes you keep telling yourself you’re over it but the negative thinking keeps creeping back into your life. You need to fully realize that the only person you’re hurting is yourself.

Let’s say you’ve hurt someone’s feelings. You may think about this day and night until you can’t take it anymore, and you have to seek this person out to apologize. The person might not even remember what happened, or they may just accept your apology. The point is you suffered with negative thoughts until you sought forgiveness.

There’s no need to cause yourself severe suffering because you made a mistake, instead seek peace and resolution, then move forward with your head held high!