Are you happy?  I mean really happy! Do you wake up each day with curiosity, excited to enjoy another amazing day at work or with family and friends?

Or are you suffering? Hitting the snooze multiple times. Wondering why you’re getting up at all. Hating the job you have to trudge to daily.

Are you making Powerful Decisions for Your Life? Asking or that raise or promotion.  Planning a family reunion or taking that Dream Vacation to Hawaii or some other Exotic Destination?

Or are you indecisive? Investigating and analyzing things over and over before making a decision? Second guessing yourself. Wondering if the boss will laugh at you for asking for a raise.  Looking at your checkbook and wondering if you’ll get to take any vacation.

When we are sad, jealous, frustrated or focused on any other negative emotion, we are engaging in our sympathetic nervous system. We are in Fight, Flight or Freeze. Our brain is reacting and ensuring we survive.

When we are in a positive frame of mind, when our heart is filled with gratitude, we move through life in flow. We surrender and trust that everything is happening for our greater good. We thrive.

Mindset starts with this key understanding. This simple distinction that we Thrive when we are in a Positive Powerful State and we survive when we are suffering.

Scarcity. Fear. Worry. Survive

Many of us want to thrive, but we spend much or our time worrying over the future (listening to negative thoughts, comparing ourselves to others) that our brain keeps us more often than not in survival mode. When we live in fear that we won’t have enough, or we believe we are not good enough, this system gets us ready for the danger our brain is sensing. However, this danger is usually our imagination. It’s not real. We are reacting to thoughts that are untrue.

2020 had many of us living in survival mode. We were scared of the future. Worried about those we love. Many of us lived in scarcity, not having a job or wondering if and when we would be let go, or wondering if our business would survive. I can relate. In late 2020 I had to close our Yoga Studio and file bankruptcy. I was scared. I wondered if we would ever recover. Would we lose everything. There were moments I felt all I was doing was surviving.

But my mind training kicked in. I knew if I remained in this survival mode, I was not going to make powerful decisions. As long as I was in Fight Flight or Freeze Mode I would continue to operate in the same manner, doing everything I could just to survive. Without letting go of the fear and worry, I would never get back to thriving. I was not having that!

When we are in Survival Mode, we aren’t thinking clearly.

Think about it. When you are angry, do you make good decisions? I know when I get mad, I can lose my temper and that doesn’t solve anything. When we are scared, we take whatever job we find because we are living in scarcity, fearful that the better job will never present itself and we’ve got make the rent or mortgage payment.

Survival is great when we need it. When we meet a bear in the woods for instance.

But Survival Mode for non-life-threatening situations? Well it really doesn’t help and can make matters much worse.

Are you stuck moving between? Are you Striving?

So how do we get out of Survival Mode?

Making the leap to Thriving can be challenging! To go from worry and fear one day, to living in abundance, making powerful decisions, and consciously creating your life the next, may be a bit daunting. But, we can move to striving, where we start to be mindful of our thoughts. We notice the patterns that bring about the fear and anxiety. And when we notice, we do the work to eliminate it.

What’s this work?

First is recognizing what can be called, unintelligent thinking. The thoughts that keep you in survival mode. The one’s like “I’ll never get out of debt.” Or, “what am I going to do if this job doesn’t work out for me.” Or maybe it’s “I’ll never meet the person of my dreams. Everyone’s a jerk.”

All of that is unintelligent thinking. But they are thoughts that appear more often than not.

And they don’t help us.

Becoming aware of this negative thought pattern is the first step.

Second step is changing those limiting beliefs, those negative thoughts, into powerful decisions, powerful beliefs. Here’s where the work comes in and where many people get stuck in striving.

See, they think that simply by saying a few positive statements, creating a powerful mantra they can say over and over to themselves, they’ll move directly to Thriving. It doesn’t happen that way.

It’s a practice. A process.

Yes, make a new powerful decision, but now find evidence for it.

In my coaching program, The Total MindShift,  I teach this as a daily practice; writing down our limiting beliefs, those negative thoughts, creating new empowering beliefs, and then finding evidence to reinforce these new beliefs. Your brain needs to visualize them and create certainty that they are true.

There’s a lot more to this practice and if you want to learn more, start with my Free 7 Day MindShift. It’s a 7 day email program which highlights different practices you can begin to utilize in order to move from Survival to Striving to finally Thriving!

Do you want to Survive, Strive, or THRIVE?

In order to Thrive, we must learn to live in a Positive Powerful State.

When we allow others to have control over us, over our mood and our state, we live in survival mode. This limits our mind from seeing so many opportunities that are right in front of us.

When we consciously create a life (and body) we love, we learn to surrender and trust.

When we believe the Universe, God, (whatever you call this higher power), is always working for us, we find the good in everything. Even in things we don’t like, we can find the lesson. We can see it as a sign directing us to something even better. We trust and let go.

No one wants to just survive. But it takes courage, patience and practice to move from striving to Thriving. It takes Consciously Creating Your Life!

If you are ready to begin learning how to Thrive, to live in Flow every day, set up a Discovery Call with me!

Stop Surviving. Stop Striving. Start Thriving.

How can I help?