“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius

I love endlessly scrolling through instagram and pinterest liking and sharing lovely positive affirmations. But do they actually change you and your thinking in any real way besides that initial ‘yeah’ I’m a boss babe (can’t stand that expression) or ‘yes! i’m going to manifest blah blah blah’. They are just words. Nice, kind, inspirational words but abstract and not necessarily actionable.

But what is more powerful and beneficial is to see what is possible within your own thinking.

Have you ever taken the time to just sit and observe the way your brain works? How many thoughts move through. And then some of those thoughts are then challenged like a little fist fight within your brain. Yes you can do this, but no you can’t. I’m going to take a leap, but you will fall flat on your face. The battle of high quality thoughts being torn down by low quality thoughts.

Thinking high quality thoughts that you can believe versus saying affirmations that you don’t believe is so much more powerful.

Today’s exercise: Create a thought audit.

Grab your journal or a piece of empty paper and write a list of high quality thoughts that you want to have stored in your brain that will become more and more accessible the more you start to believe them.

Do your best to put low quality thoughts to the side, get rid of them, they are not serving you at all.

But here comes the hard part, you have to actually practice believing these high quality thoughts, sit with them. Adjust them where needed.

That back and forth that goes on in your brain has a lot to do with your self confidence and what you believe about yourself. The high quality thoughts you know you are capable of – but then you doubt yourself somewhere along the way and these low quality, negative, beat yourself up thoughts take over.

Maybe you will not believe that you can reinvent yourself overnight but you can start to believe that you are capable of taking steps with the intention of creating this outcome. “I am able to write my dream down on paper, visualize who I will become and start creating steps towards my goal.” “I am going to let go of worrying about what people think about me and what I want to accomplish, because fear of judgement is holding me back from being me.”

Working up to thoughts that you can believe that reinventing yourself / achieving your impossible goal is the inevitable outcome. Aspirational high quality thoughts that you are working towards.

Easier said than done, but programming our brains with the exact thoughts that will get us the feelings and results that we want in our lives will build this self confidence. Be mindful and make a concerted effort to not judge yourself and what your brain is thinking. Be curious. Be deliberate in wanting to create a different outcome.

Take the time to watch your thinking. Challenge yourself to put your brain to work. Ask yourself useful questions that will prompt thoughts about what you can be doing to live into this newer version of yourself. How do you want to reinvent yourself? What does your dream look like in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years? How will you act as this newer version of you? Your brain can come up with answers for you.

When you aren’t judging yourself and put your brain to work solving for you, you will be amazed at the solutions it can come up with.

I continue to enjoy daily affirmations and feel good inspirational quotes but taking real action and watching my thoughts more deliberately has led to tangible results.

Make sure to do that thought audit – it is so insightful and incredibly powerful.

Looking to create a life plan and reinvent yourself after 50?