Whatever you appreciate in your reality will keep “appreciating” (growing) in your reality because whatever you give attention/focus to gets attracted into your experience. When your focus is on appreciation, you will find that your reality seems to give you more and more opportunities for appreciation.
Appreciation is a mindset which can be developed quite easily with practice. A lot of people unconsciously develop the mindset of “complaining” rather than being appreciative – look at your whole day and determine what percentage of your thoughts were appreciative and what percentage were critical/negative – it will give you an idea of what you are attracting more into your reality. If you are mostly critical/negative about things around you, life will seem to bring you more and more circumstances that give you reasons to be critical. While if you are mostly appreciative of things around you, life will seem to bring you circumstances that give your more opportunities to be appreciative. There is no getting around the simple truth that external reality will always mirror your inner state of being.
Avoid being critical of yourself and others
If you have the habit of being self-critical, you will notice that you are also critical of others and things around you. No matter what the circumstance be, you will notice your mind looking for reasons to criticize and complain. Any pattern which is repeated for a while becomes ingrained in the brain and becomes “repetitive” at a subconscious level. So when you develop the pattern of complaining, there will come a point where your brain becomes “attuned” to complaining almost at a subconscious level where you don’t even seem to have any control over the thoughts of criticism and resentment that arise.
The habit of being critical got developed because you were quite unconscious of the toxicity that it was creating in your energy field. But now that you are getting more and more aware of the influence of negativity in your reality, you can start dis-identifying from this pattern and start inculcating a patter of “appreciation”. It may seem difficult to appreciate things if you’ve been a critical person for long, but it gets easier with practice and in time it will be your second nature. Start first with letting go of the need to be critical of yourself, and then move towards avoiding being critical towards other people, while also looking for reasons to appreciate your reality and yourself more and more.
Develop love rooted behaviors
Hatred is a highly toxic thought form because it’s completely opposite of your natural vibration of love. Appreciation is rooted in love while criticism is rooted in hatred. When you hate on others, you will see others hating on you more often. When you are appreciative of others, you will see others being appreciative of you. But don’t expect others to change first and become appreciative of you, because that’s not how it works – it’s you that needs to change first and become appreciative, the external reality will follow your lead.
If you find it really difficult to find reasons to be appreciative of your life presently, then don’t try to force thoughts in your mind and just relax. It’s enough if you just let go of being critical, even if you don’t feel appreciative – just be neutral for a while. Understand that complaining, and resenting, does not change the flavor of your reality to positive. The only way to make a shift towards positive reality is to let go of hate rooted behaviors and embrace love rooted behaviors. Complaining, resenting, criticizing, are hate rooted behaviors while appreciation, acceptance, gratitude are love rooted behaviors. The more love oriented you are the more your life becomes rooted in abundance and well-being.
Nice article. I find myself always being critical of myself and others, I try to think positively but it’s so hard, it seems the negativity always seeps in eventually.
I constantly put myself down and make myself think I’m not worthy, especially when it comes to women I’m attracted to.
I’m also quite critical when I come into contact with fake people. Those that like to show off and just do what others do to fit in with the crowd. I can’t stand them.
I’d like to change these habits and I have been doing similar things to what you’ve mentioned above but it doesn’t seem to work too well for me. Any other advice you could give?
Also, any books you could recommend to do with what you write about?
Thanks.
Owing to your past attention to negative thoughts in the mind, they have gained a momentum. It’s also scientifically proven that the brain develops strong neural pathways in response to the thought patterns we give attention to. So if you have been in the habit of giving attention to negative/limiting thoughts in the past, your brain would have some strong neural pathways built for these thought patterns and hence they keep “repeating” themselves even if you are consciously trying to think positive. It will take some time before the old neural pathways get dissolved, this is what i call the “ebbing away of negative momentum”. Once you start dis-identifying with negativity in your mind (by seeing through its dysfunction) and start steadily practicing staying rooted in thoughts of love/joy/abundance/peace (positive thoughts) the momentum of negativity will start dying away slowly but surely. It usually takes a few months, may be even an year before the negative momentum can ebb away significantly. So don’t feel disheartened if you are not seeing immediately evidence of change in your reality, remember that you’ve given several years of attention to unconscious negative thinking and hence it will take some time before this momentum dies away after you embrace positive alignment consciously.
The simple truth is that the thoughts that you give “attention” create your reality. The keyword is “attention”. Thoughts can come up in the brain (owing to past momentum), but if you don’t give attention to them through your interest/belief, they will not have the power to influence your reality and will start dying away in their force. Initially it may seem as if the pull of negative thoughts is very strong, this is because of the momentum they have gained from your past attention to them. You have the choice now to slowly dis-attach your attention from these thoughts, no matter how strong their pull. When you do this, their pull will keep getting weaker with time and within a few months you will notice that negativity is not able to pull you in anymore.
Some books that I find very powerful, in shifting limited/negative perspectives of the mind,are as below
“The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle
“Emptiness Dancing” by Adyashanti
“Conversations with God” Neale Donald
The above books can give you deep insights on your true nature as the universal consciousness, the essence of who you are. This understanding is the foundation because it grounds you in your real identity, and out of the limited ideas you may have of yourself.
“Ask and it’s Given” by Ester and Jerry Hicks (In fact all the books (I think there are 7 of them) by Ester and Jerry Hicks are very useful in understanding your nature as a creator)
There are many books out there that talk about law of attraction, but none of them combine the science of desire manifestation and your true nature, the way Ester and Jerry Hicks books do. You will notice that in these books its mentioned that they get the answers from the intelligence of non-physical by aligning with the vibration of it (they call the non-physical intelligence as abraham for the sake of reference), and lot of people get skeptical about such notions of channeling answers and miss the point of their message. When you read these books just focus on the message and sense the truth of it in your own heart. You don’t have to believe anything that does not resonate with your heart.
It’s a beautiful article..thanks..
Thanks.
How to appreciate friend that has superiority complex ? That competes with me in everything, especially when we are with other people. She always has to say thinks to look her more knowledgeable , better and more confident. She goes even to length that she is ok to say on one of my jokes that my mom had to push me to do everything she said : O I wasn’t like that. My parents know that I am confident and thats why they let me go in Europe to study ” How to not be hurt and angry and hate her ?