A few years ago, after stepping away from a bad relationship, I felt totally lost. But I knew I had to walk away, and I did.

On one side, I felt truly relieved, but on the other side I kept thinking about how bad I was going to feel the next time I’d see him, or how bad I’d feel when seeing him with another woman. I’d torment myself, thinking about the most painful scenes ever, until I opened myself up to get help.

In less than a month I wasn’t even thinking about nightmare situations with my ex. Instead, I had found myself again and I was on the right track to keep improving as a human being.

“Don’t wait for your feelings to change to take the action. Take the action and your feelings will change”. — Barbara Baron

This leads me to Step 1 on how to move your thoughts in the right direction: Be open to improve and say yes to solutions.

Step 2 – Once you decide you want to improve the course of your thoughts and journey, commit to yourself and to everyone that you will grow and change because you will follow through with discipline.

Step 3 – Do the work. Follow a plan, and stick to it. Here are some suggestions: If you have awful thoughts about yourself very often, I recommend you start scheduling them.

Put your awful thoughts in your calendar. Maybe you can have 20 minutes of terrible thoughts every morning, but then not allow them the whole rest of the day.

If you find yourself doing it again during the day, you will do something you don’t enjoy. For example: if you don’t enjoy cleaning the kitchen or doing the laundry, that’s what you will do every time you have more than one minute of terrible thoughts outside your schedule.

Step 4 – Increase your awareness. I also suggest you do this: If you give importance to deciding what you will wear each day, from now on you will give even more importance to what you decide to think. Be aware of every thought.

Would you like to listen to music you don’t like all day long? I’m sure you wouldn’t. It’s the same with your thoughts.

Step 5 – Let them go and forgive. Whenever you have bad thoughts about yourself, let them go. Forgive yourself about it and bring in good the good thoughts.

If you can’t think of good thoughts at that moment, I encourage you to create a mantra to repeat whenever you realize you are having bad thoughts. One that I have used in the past is “Every day I feel better about every aspect of my life”.

Now I would love to hear your strategies too!

What do you do to keep your thoughts in the right direction?

And if you have struggles with this topic, what are they?

I wish you a great life with loving thoughts,

Carolina xo