Once you become awake to this truth, you instantly begin to exert more influence over your life. You are no longer "asleep at the wheel." Becoming aware of this is a huge step in the right direction- but awareness is never enough by itself- action is required and daily practices to help us develop our feeling-GPS listening skills need to be put in place. For example, when you notice that you're feeling a negative emotion- like anxiety, fear, self-pity, guilt, anger or jealousy (all very common when we compare ourselves to others in the wrong way- see How To Compare Yourself To Others), the first step is to be able to step back and see what's going on. "Ahh, I must be believing a thought that is trying to take me off course."

The next step is to try to identify the thought itself- bring it into conscious focus. To use our previous example, it might be a thought like "I am not as good as my friend because he is more established than me. I should be more established than I am. " It is believing (giving our attention to) this thought that "I should be something other than what I currently am" that our feelings are responding too. They instantly pour chemicals from our glands into our blood stream that make us feel "yucky" like a warning bell sounding as if trying to say "Stop! Don't give your attention to that untrue thought- it's taking you down from where you need to be in order to see where you need to go.   Down there in that low mood- it's dark, your creativity is shut down, your perspective becomes limited, you make poor choices- you literally can't see with your mind's eye what God has in store for you."

So what can we DO if we are now awake to what's going on and we FEEL a warning bell going off inside us? Even when we can see what's happening, we often feel powerless to do anything about it. But we're not powerless. There are two things we can do. Both are simple but not necessarily easy at first. But like all endeavors of mind and body, with continued practice it becomes easier and we become more masterful.  

The first thing we can do is to deliberately shift our attention from the thought that we're getting negative feeling feedback from and move it to a higher frequency thought that feels better. This will work for most thoughts that we haven't given too much of our attention to in the past.  

For thoughts that have really taken root and begun to grow like weeds in our consciousness, more drastic measures are required. We need to mentally challenge the truth of the thought and expose it as the fraud that it is. Both of these mental techniques are very effective, but to do them justice, they need to be the topic of their own article.

John Groberg writes on a wide variety of topics related to personal and spiritual growth. His slogan is Grow. By Choice™. His articles draw out principles of personal and spiritual growth common to the world’s ancient wisdom and spiritual texts as well as many of the great philosophers, poets, and writers of ancient and modern times. These principles are then put to the test in his own life with an emphasis on simple, sustainable practices we can apply in our daily lives to more effectively deal with the stresses and struggles of modern life and to more fully realize the benefits of deliberate growth. John developed a model called the Divine-Align-Shine model as a way of visually organizing the principles, practices and the overall process of personal and spiritual growth. His writings are cataloged and organized on his website, www.johngroberg.com where contact information is available.