As New Year’s prompts you to look ahead, it is worth considering how you can fortify your mind in the coming year. Your brain is your greatest asset when it comes to goals and self-improvement, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. If you are like most of us, you have some negative thought patterns that have become well-established during your life path. Although these are roadblocks to your success, you can retrain your marvelous brain to replace them with new resolve, positivity, and success-building patterns. Though this effort is a war of many battles—a process rather than a one-time fix—you can set yourself on the road to victory.
Identify the Issues
First, you need to figure out what thoughts are holding you prisoner. These will be different for everyone, but here are four of the most basic ones that could be stopping you from reaching your potential.External Validation: Was it always important for you to get good grades in school? Perhaps you had pressure from a parent to be in the top five, or they would take away some privilege or activity from you. Then again, it could be you felt that being an honor student would make your peers admire you. The pressure to be better than everyone else can yield some good qualities like perseverance and discipline, but it comes with side effects. If you are doing things so others approve, or to be better than others, you are motivated by external approval, rather than by an intrinsic sense of worth.
