Positive Thinking Archives

10 Rules to Live By

Have you ever been curious, really curious, about the rules, traditions and dogmas you follow? Have you ever take time to analyze or think through some of the “rules” given to you by your school, your parents, your religion, your society? Do these rules work for you? Do they make you a better, kinder, happier human? Do they negatively affect others around you (who deserve as much happiness and peace as you do)?

I ask myself these questions regularly and come up with my own set of rules to live by based on my experiences and the curiosity that makes me ask others about their own. I truly believe that natural curiosity makes me a more compassionate and understanding member of the human species.

Here are the 10 ones I have been contemplating for the last few months and wanted to share them with you, in hopes they help you build your own. Enjoy!

Rule 1: All living creatures deserve happiness and safety

Rule 2: Take responsibility (for your actions, your thoughts, yourself)

Rule 3: See both sides of the argument before making a judgment call

Rule 4: Great achievements involve great risk, an a healthy dose of fear

Rule 5: Embrace your fear, not the other way around

Rule 6: Practice the 2-1 rule, listen twice as often as you talk (two ears for one mouth)

Rule 7: Change is part of you, and it’s a darn good thing

Rule 8: If things don’t go your way, take a step off, regroup, re-plan and redo

Rule 9: Don’t hold anger for others in your soul. That anger only hurts you

Rule 10: Be a lifelong student. Every day, find a new lesson to enrich your life.

7 Principles to Health and Wealth as a Business Woman

I have a special treat for you. Back in November of 2016, I gave a speech in front of 800 business women in my native San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Animus Summit (considered the biggest women conference in Latin America), featured 2 dozen amazing speakers, including US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (an amazing honored to be included in her company).

The conference organizers shared the video of my speech and I couldn’t wait to share it with my community. The topics was “Principles to Health and Wealth as a Business Woman”.

You’re a woman entrepreneur that feels like you need to split in 3 to get things done. And too often you’re overwhelmed and exhausted. You know your body can be better and that you need to do something but don’t know what, when or how.

Want to share your thoughts about this speech? Please leave a comment below!

helping a depressed person, when a loved one is depressed

How To Support Someone With Depression

How to support someone with depression? There’s a lot being said about people who suffer from it and how to get help but I feel like not a lot is being said or expressed by those who have a loved one that suffers from depression.

I am one of those. A very dear person in my life has struggled with depression for years. It is hard for me to talk about this and I won’t go into details about my loved one ordeal. This is video is for you, the person who has a loved one who may be depressed. your support and encouragement can play an important role in his or her recovery.

Check out the video here:

I promise you, they appreciate it, even though it feels like you’re repeating yourself over and over and nothing. Rest assure, you MUST take care of yourself as well.

What you need to remember:

It is not personal
This is not a game, it is serious
Ignoring it, won’t make it go away
You. Can’t. Fix. It.

BUT your are the first line of defense in the fight against depression. Always remember that 2 ears 1 mouth ratio. Just encourage them to talk in a kind way and listen, listen, listen. And of course, ask if they need advice – don’t just offer it.

You can also try asking questions like:

Did something happen that made you start feeling this way?
How can I best support you right now?
Have you thought about getting help?

Avoid saying:

Just snap out of it.
What’s wrong with you?
Shouldn’t you be better by now?
It’s all in your head.
We all go through times like this.
Look on the bright side.
You have so much to live for why do you want to die?
I can’t do anything about your situation.

How to do take care of yourself???

Set boundaries: ask your loved one to get a therapist
Take some time for yourself every day, especially if you live with the depressed person
Seek support from a trusted friend – make sure they are discreet
Keep living your own life

How To Practice Self Love

Yes, I’m naked on this video because I want to talk about self-love. And no, not the physical act of self love! It is about accepting and loving who you are exactly as you are!

Today, I want you acknowledge and honor your needs and feelings and practice some kindness and compassion with yourself. You can try some of these 5 different ideas on the video below.

Now, which one of these tips are you willing to try right now? Do you have any other fun ways to practice self love? Make sure to leave a comment below and let me know!

The Food For Thought Summit Coming Soon!

For the last 4 months, I’ve been working on a little project that I’m really excited about and now I’m ready to share with you!

It’s called Food For Thought: The Mind, Body, Spirit Summit!

From April 14th-18th, I’ll be interviewing top wellness experts (doctors, nutritionists, therapists, coaches, best-selling authors) on how they manage to sustain a healthy lifestyle. All interviews will be available online at the Food For Thought website.

Since I know you’ve been searching for practical ways to live a healthier, more active lifestyle, the Food for Thought Summit is here to help you!

The #1 reason why people struggle to keep a healthy lifestyle is overwhelm. There’s just too much information out there! This summit will help you cut through the clutter, learn ways to stay motivated and create your own personal wellness revolution!

Click Here to check out the website and more details!

As a loyal member of my community you have immediate access to the summit and the Facebook Group Absolutely FREE!

SHARE this post with your friends so they too get FREE access to the summit.

3 Simple Steps To Eliminate Negativity

You must defy pessimism and negativity at all costs. Negativity has nothing good to offer and creates limitations and stunts growth.

Do not allow your mind or outside forces to lower your expectations. You are capable of magnificent things, simply because you are human.

There are lots of talents in you waiting to be developed and used for your own good and the good of all. Remember you are a creature of God; your own existence is a gift, a miracle.

Continue to see your life in this light and you will see how your daily chores, plans, and goals will develop in a peaceful, joyful way. There is no reason why you should not have a lot of fun and live a happy life as a positive thinker starting now.

Your thoughts are powerful tools that, if used positively, can help you reach your goals. On the other hand, negative thinking can affect our bodies, our work, and our plans in the same negative ways as diseases. Following are some techniques to help overcome and eliminate negativity:

Don’t give negative thinking any power. Thoughts and ideas only become powerful when you, the thinker, empower them. If you have a negative thought and decide to ignore it, or if a negative person tries to bring you down and you quickly dismiss it, you can move on without being affected by it.
Use positive thinking to counter negativity. If someone tells you that you will never be financially independent, you should automatically tell yourself, “I am going to be financially independent faster than originally planned.” The same works for other aspects of your life. When thoughts about relationships come to your mind, for example, and you start thinking that you will never fall in love again, you counter-act by saying, “I will meet a special person and will be in a loving, meaningful, long-lasting relationship soon.” By doing so, you will take the power away from your negative thoughts, and give it to a positive one. This will not only help you get rid of negativity, it will help you become a more positive individual by always seeing the “glass half full”.
Be aware of your thoughts and try recognizing them as negative or positive. Continue to nurture the positive thoughts, and write down on a piece of paper as many of the negative ones as you can remember. Then read through the list, and analyze them, recognizing that they are simply negative ideas. Think of them as pieces of your mind that you just removed and placed on the paper. Once on the paper and out of your head, they can remain there forever. Quietly acknowledge this and part ways with your negative thoughts.

Use these or any other techniques to move past the negativity in yourself and others, and you will see how much easier the process of living becomes. There is no need for any of your thoughts to haunt you or hurt you in any way. Your thoughts are one of the few things in this world you can control, and you should allow them to empower you, not the other way around.

6 Steps Open Your Heart And Soul

Opening your heart and soul is the first step to unleashing the unlimited power within you. You must learn to identify all the things in your conscious and subconscious mind that stunt the growth of your mind, body, and spirit.

Positive changes will be evident in your life when your body and mind are open and receptive to the energy that created you and the energy around you.

We have been given the power to develop ideas and exercise free will.

We grow and develop egos that preserve very particular ideas about ourselves in relation to the world around us.

It is those ideas; both good and bad, along with free will, that make you feel that you are better than others. The development of these ideas and/or the obsession with these ideas may be what makes some people evil, violent, angry, or sad.

They teach us to discriminate, hate, stereotype, and judge unfairly.

Those ideas may be good for some, but not for all.

From these ideas there are lessons to be learned, but you can freely discard any part of them in order to reconnect with the perfect, peaceful, loving, and kind energy that created you.

To help you further understand how to open your heart and soul, try one or more of these simple steps:

Get Your Ego In Check: Your ego is your conscious mind, that which controls your behavior and tries to give meaning to your external, material reality. It is powerful and can control your life, if you allow it to. Your external reality is a direct result of your mental and spiritual self. If your mental and spiritual self are not where you want them to be, your external and material self will suffer. The ego cannot improve the quality of your mental and spiritual life.

Rid your mind of judgment: Our minds are full of ideas instilled in us by countless sources: our parents, culture, friends, history, teachers, loved ones and religious leaders. Judgment tells you that a finite set of ideas are the only correct ideas. All other beliefs are wrong.

Practice Silence: It sounds unbelievable, but most of us living in modern societies have a very hard time being quiet or enjoying the absence of verbiage. Sometimes we are too darn busy talking, listening to music or trying to relax with special gadgets that we forget about ourselves, and cause undue stress, anxiety and diseases in the process. Understanding that we have the power to soothe and relax our mind, body, and spirit with no outside help is essential to opening yourself to all the possibilities that lie ahead.

Learn to Meditate: There are many meditation techniques, but the end result is (or should be) always the same: create a relaxed state of mental and physical being by focusing and calming the mind. When you are in silent meditation, there is a balance between the internal and external you that will help heal, empower and create a revitalized you.

Learn To Pray: It sounds somewhat silly since most of use have been taught by our guardians or friends a very specific way of praying. In fact, most of us were taught that praying is something reserved for very particular situations, such as getting something that you want. Yet, prayer should be a conversation with ourselves and the divine energy that created us in order to find common ground and find solutions to our problems.

Trust Yourself: Always remember that you are a divine creature. There is reason and meaning, not only for the different experiences in your life, but for your life as a whole. We are all here to learn and better our lives for ourselves and those around us. Trust in every experience because every single one of them will bring you closer to your life’s destiny. Never think of them as a distraction or a detour. Recognize the lesson in each positive or negative experience, and try to find the meaning of each one.

Keep Hope Alive: At some point or another, we all lose hope. Life is full of challenges. While discovering your path or purpose, it is not uncommon to encounter situations or problems that seem too big to handle. When this happens, it is perfectly normal to feel discouraged and lose motivation. You may go back to old habits or engage in new, more distracting habits that lead you away from your path.

Make Positivism the Best Motivator For Change

It is part of our human nature to get a boost of energy, led by adrenaline, when we get angry. When you see or experience something that angers you, chances are you use it as a motivator to change, to make sure it never happens again.

Angers leads to desire, to hope and action. But what about positivism? What about the radical idea of using a positive attitude to inspire hope, change and action. Hope to understand that it is possible.

Change to ensure that good trumps evil every time. Action to progress towards enlightenment every day.

But how? How do we turn away from a using negative energy as a powerful motivator to positivism as a tool for positive change?

The first course of action is remembering the power of your own mind. Your mind is capable of magnificent things. There are lots of talents in you waiting to be developed and used for your own good and the good of all.

When your life in this light, it becomes easier to be motivated to change in a more peaceful, joyful way.

Your thoughts are powerful tools that, when used positively, can help you create realities you never thought possible. Following are some techniques to help use the power of a positive mind to affect change in the world:

Don’t give anger and negative thinking any power. Thoughts and ideas only become powerful when you, the thinker, empower them. If you have an angry thought and decide to ignore it, it will become easier to move ahead without being affected by the negative thinking.

Use positive thinking to counter negativity. If someone tells you that you will never be financially independent, you should automatically tell yourself, “I am going to be financially independent faster than originally planned”. Your initial reaction may be anger and frustration but using positive language will help you change how you feel about this experience without losing motivation. The same works for other aspects of your life. When thoughts about relationships come to your mind, for example, and you start thinking that you will never fall in love again, you counter-act by saying, “I will meet a special person and will enjoy a loving, meaningful, long-lasting relationship soon.” By doing so, you will take the power away from your negative thoughts, and give it to a positive one.

Be aware of your thoughts and try recognizing them as negative or positive. Continue to nurture the positive thoughts, and write down on a piece of paper as many of the negative ones as you can remember. Then read through the list, and analyze them, recognizing that they are simply negative ideas. Think of them as pieces of your mind that you just removed and placed on the paper, ready to be disposed of. Once on the paper and out of your head, they can remain there forever. Quietly acknowledge this and part ways with your negative thoughts.

Your thoughts are some of the few things in the world that are 100% under your control.

Nothing else truly is. And very few things are as powerful as those very thoughts. Use them and allow them to empower you, and you will soon be a catalyst for amazing positive change in the world.

How To Keep An Open Mind

Your ideals, values, and belief system have all been shaped and influenced by your background.

Your thoughts are influenced mostly by what others taught you about where you come from, the color of your skin, your religion, the political views of the majority, what your ancestors believed in, etc.

It was important to teach you what to be, what to think, and what to believe in.

It was especially important to teach you that those ideas are the only ones to follow, the only ones that are correct, and the ones that will bring you safety and happiness. Most of you were not allowed to think outside those ideals and if you did, most likely, you were regarded as a rebel, ungrateful, or an unworthy member of the group.

Your parents or guardians likely had the best of intentions to help you grow into a happy, healthy individual that fits in the culture around. To help attain that, they may have taught or tried to teach you ideas that may be discriminatory, stereotypical, and wrong about people that do not belong in your cultural, social, or racial group.

The intention was to teach you to be the best person you can become, but instead (and most likely unconsciously) they may have helped you harbor feelings associated with a narrow mindset that does not respect the divinity in yourself and others.

Instead of nurturing feelings of disrespect or self-centeredness that may limit your potential for growth, be open to the idea that you are part of the world, and the world and all of its components are part of you, both good and bad.

It is then up to you to have an open mind about people, ideas, and everything else you encounter. An open mind will allow you to learn…

When you learn, you understand, and when you understand, you learn to love.

This is the only way you can objectively give and receive. When you have an open mind, you can see the beauty and love that the universe has to offer, and you can get so much more from it.

If you see in others love, kindness, compassion, and understanding, you will receive exactly that.

Some of the principles to help you have or maintain an open mind include:

Allow your mind to make positive choices.

Become conscious of and admit any fears or wrongdoings and make an effort to rectify them as soon as possible.

Remember that opening your heart and mind heals because it is a natural function of your body to rid itself of anything that hurts or sickens it.

Talk to someone, write, or express your fears, doubts, and mistakes to create a sense of release that will bring positive energies to your life.

Remember that you are one with the universe and all its members. Use the positive energies that the universe has to offer to your advantage by offering and giving some of the good in you.

There is no one superior or inferior to you. Support this thought with knowledge. If, for example, you dislike a religious or social group or disagree with someone because of his/her views and preferences, offer to learn about it before engaging in fruitless discussions and pre-judgments that will enrage you and prevent you from reaching a peaceful state.

Keep track of judgments, negative influences, and actions. Continue raising your awareness of what limits your thoughts and feelings so that you can easily change them as soon as they arise.

When you find yourself in stressful situations that may anger you and bring to light discriminatory practices, remember that even if you don’t agree with something it does not make it wrong. Similarly, the fact that you agree with something does not necessarily make it right.

Be an instrument of peace. As Saint Francis of Assisi said in his now famous prayer, allow the divine energy to make you the means by which the world around you (including yourself) finds understanding, pardon, hope, faith, light, and joy.

What you think and what you do affects other people. Make sure that the energies you send out of your body (even in the form of thought) are open, kind, and understanding. Be open to receive the same tenfold.

6 Ideas To Positively Control Your Mind (Not The Other Way Around)

Buddha once said: “What you Think, You Become”.

Thousands of years later, author Robert Collier said: “All power is from within and is therefore under our own control”.

There have been hundreds of great thinkers from Buddah our modern-day mentors telling us, in one way or another that our minds are incredibly powerful and that we have the power to direct our thoughts and emotions to help us attain happiness, peace and spirituality.

But how many of us truly follow these principles? How many of us honestly can say that we have control over our minds, not the other way around.

I certainly have been an object of my own negative thoughts and emotions and have let my mind control me and steer me into a place that only leads to frustration, confusion and negativity. Intellectually, I know that I can control my mind and that this control is the key to manifesting great things in my life. Yet, sometimes it seems harder than others.

The key then is in finding ideas that will help you take control and maintain it. If you can take control of what you believe to be true, you can create a present that fits your life, values, and desires and can ultimately shape your future.

If you feel that because you tried to and failed in the past, it is not possible to succeed, then you must work on learning how to change your belief system so that it works for you instead of against you.

These general rules will help you change your belief system into one that works best for you:

Do not let fear and pain from past experiences guide what you will and will not do. Up to now, you have lived in fear of getting disappointed over and over. Fear breeds nothing but more fear and disappointment. Staying in a fearful state is not advisable at all. Why not keep on trying? When you are trying, there is always hope that this time your venture may work. This mentality fills you with positive, empowering energy to help you keep moving forward.

Stay away from pessimists. Do not worry about the details. Just keep working towards your goals. Optimists create discipline and persistence that allow them to always see the “glass half full”. Optimists are constantly on the move and constantly learning how to get better at what they do. When you are optimistic, you develop confidence that helps you maintain a positive outlook on life.

Remind yourself that change is good and stagnation is bad. When you are not moving or evolving, when you realize that what is creating pain and suffering, you will get up, move, and make a drastic change for good. Realize that a particular belief is causing you more harm than good, and then find a new, positive belief to replace the old one with.

Question every belief you may have. As I have mentioned before, don’t take beliefs from your culture, parents, or society for granted. Educate yourself and find out what, why, and how a belief came to be. You will realize that your perception of the “truth” is sometimes coerced by biased aspects of your particular surroundings.

Take all appropriate actions to help you move to a more positive, empowering belief system by practicing new behaviors over and over until they become part of your daily routine.

Support your new beliefs with references that allow you to learn more about what a belief means. What are the consequences of moving towards or away from these beliefs? Go over the emotional aspects of such a change.

Remember that the key to making a lasting commitment to change obsolete and limiting beliefs is communication and education. The more you know about what you think is right (or wrong); the easier it will be to adopt and maintain long-lasting changes.

Ask yourself why you believe in something or where the idea originated? More importantly, find out how a particular belief system is helping you (or holding you back) in life.

The answers may surprise you, and may lead you to a more enlightened path where you have all the positive energies and support you need to lead a more successful life.