So 10 years ago, this week, I wrote this in my journal…

” September 4, 2007

Life has been a little rough for me, the past couple of weeks. I know, there are people who have it way worse than I do, but in MY world, things haven’t been so great. […] I’ll get it right. I have to. I wish I had time to work on my novel. […] “

Yep! That was my journal entry from 2007. I recently read it, and immediately felt grateful for how far I’ve come in changing my mindset. I mean, it sounds so negative. I was a huge woe is me, Eeyore kind of person back then, but I have made drastic changes and improvements in my mind over the years.

I learned to stop focusing on the negative, and to make positive plans and changes for the future.

I realized that I was reinforcing negative experiences, rather than reinvigorating new ideas and experiences that I wanted to have.

I was used to writing down all the negative things that had happened to me, followed by all the negative things I thought and felt about them.

Then, I saw Oprah on TV, talking about The Secret, and how she used her journal as her vision board. She explained that you didn’t have to create physical vision boards in order to get what you wanted.

I could use my journal to manifest my desires? I thought.

I went searching in my bible for evidence that matched what Oprah was saying (because I didn’t wanna just take her word for it). Lo and behold, I found all sorts of things that confirmed that we actually do have that kind of power.

In previous emails and posts, I’ve talked about writing the vision, and speaking things into existence, so I won’t go back into them now. BUT when my eyes were opened to this little piece of information, around 2011, I started using my power!

Reinforce vs. Reinvent

Before I got my mind write, I was reinforcing my negative experiences. I thought about them, talked about them, and wrote about them. What this did was helped me to create more experiences like them, and I continued to relive negative scenarios over and again.

Later, I learned to reinvent my experiences, by focusing on the positive. If I had a less than pleasurable experience, I searched for the lesson in it, determined to “get it”, so that I could move forward and never repeat it. I would write what happened, but follow it up with what I was accountable for. Then, I would write out how I planned to handle it in the future, and what I wanted to happen next.

Have you been reinforcing or reinventing?

You have the power to turn things around just like I did, but you can only use your power if you believe that you have it. Grab your journal, a notebook, or a sheet of paper, right now, a make a list of the things you would like to see transformed in your life.

Need a journal to start writing out your future? Check out my handmade journals here.