"Finding Yourself"

Why is it so hard for someone to change who they are even when they know that a positive change is necessary and needed to succeed?  I can not answer this question; if I knew the answer I would do just that.  I would make a positive change to my personality to reflect more charisma and character.  I have issues with self-esteem, confidence and I suffer a lot from guilty feelings.  If I knew of a way to boost my self-esteem and confidence I would jump at the chance to do so.  I feel lost most of the time and even though I’m 33 years old I still feel like I need to find myself.  I often ask myself the question, “Who am I?”

    I have been practicing positive thinking and striving ever so hard to notice when I am having negative thought patterns so that I may change them to positive or at least recognize when and why I have those thoughts.  I have been telling myself that my negative thoughts and premonitions about the future are not true and I have been trying to visualize positive events, situations, and outcomes to my theories and fantasies about future events.  It seems to be working.  Changing from a negative thinker to a positive thinker overnight isn’t something that is going to be easy for me to do, nor will it happen overnight.  I have to keep working on it and I am POSITIVE that I will eventually beat these negative thinking patterns that I have conditioned myself into doing. 

    There are a series of things one can do to stop negative thinking patterns.  First you have to be self-aware and conscious of your thinking patterns.  Constantly ask yourself if you are having negative thought patterns.  Is my thinking rational?  I tend to try and think about and dwell on the worst case scenario in almost all situations, so instead of dwelling on the negative, I have begun to stop those negative thought patterns by doing exactly the opposite.  I create a vision of the future where I am successful, happy, and everything went the way I wanted it.  I envision a future where I make it happen and make it come true.  I have begun to put myself in the company of people that are positive and not negative.  A negative person can bring you down.  Knowing that I am, or have been, a negative person makes me realize that if I don’t change my thoughts, comments and attitude I may lose friends, family and even my job.  I have to turn it around, be happy and positive around people.

    Since I have taken this class, I have realized that it takes yourself to change the situations that you believe to be wrong in your life.  Life will not change the way you perceive life to be and it’s all perception.   How I view myself is how I view life.  If I think of myself negatively I will look at life negatively so I must change myself, my behavior and my attitude towards life and situations that happen to me in order to overcome the lose self-esteem, low confidence and guilt that I feel in life.  I have taken the first steps to doing just that.  You know what?  It gets easier the more I do it.  The more I stop my negative thoughts and negative attitudes to situations the happier I feel.  I have begun to look on the bright side of things, to find the bright side to every situation instead of dwelling on only the bad outcomes that may arise from situations that are beyond my control. 

Becoming more positive will change my life for the better.  I will accomplish great things if I can just keep it up, keep going, keep moving and never stop believing in myself and my abilities to succeed in life.  I am on the road to finding myself and finding out that being happy with myself begins within me.