Positive Thinking - a process

There is always a process to changing your mindset. Just because I had to go through a divorce and life upheaval doesn't mean that you will. You can start right where you are. I'm just describing my process.

So as I'm grieving the loss of my marriage, my son leaving in April to stay with his grandparents, working essentially two jobs - I worked full time as well as kept the part-time transcription work going - I was reading. It seems as though whenever one book would end I would find another.

Sometimes I would read the book all the way through and it would resonate with me. Sometimes I would only read part of it. But everything made an impact on me and the process I was going through.

My goal was to feel better. My goal was to be successful at my dreams, with or without anyone else. I realized that since I was the only one who could control my actions, I was the only one that could make my
dreams come true. For too long I had depended on my husband to make my dreams come true. I had spent money on one thing after another, trying to be self supporting, but in reality it was money he had earned.
Money he had made working six days a week, working overtime just to keep the bills paid while I was working on my dreams. So I set out to find a way to make those dreams happen on my own.

I started out with Think and Grow Rich. This Napoleon Hill book is a classic by most self improvement gurus today. I obtained a lot of nuggets of wisdom in this book, even though it is outdated in many ways regarding the people discussed. But it did a lot in changing my attitude about things. Not just my attitude toward others, but also myself. I wanted to be more positive about everything.

One thing that is hard to accept in this process is that you cause your circumstances. Yes, you do. It doesn't matter who did what. It doesn't matter who hurt you. I knew that I could play the victim and no one would blame me. Maybe you can too. But it was my attitude that would draw these situtations to me. I could look back and see it happening. I would fight with my husband and threaten divorce. And what happened? We eventually divorced. I would fight with my son and want to be left alone. And he left me alone to stay with his
grandparents. I even had a running joke with my son. I'd call him smartass of the year. I even made him a certificate that said that. But I realized the more I studied LOA that I was causing the behavior. I didn't like his smartass behavior, but by calling attention to it, it would continue. So I no longer do that.

I realized that yes, my attitude was to blame. And no one could change it but me. This was something from Think and Grow Rich that hit me so hard about attitude -

You are who you are today because of your attitude with yourself and others.

And the natural ending to that hit me between the eyes - Who I will be TOMORROW is because of my attitude with myself and others. So if I wanted to be a better person tomorrow, I needed to change my
attitude TODAY.

Wow. That was a wake up call.