Change Your Thinking, Ignite Your Life: What Are You Telling Yourself?

By Kevin J. Gardner

"I am Happy! I am Healthy! I am Wealthy!" versus, "I am a fat, miserable loser." What are you telling yourself about yourself?

 

You become the person that the voice in your head says you are. So, shouldn't those thought patterns be positive, healthy, and forward-focused? In Change Your Thinking, Ignite Your Life, I share my shortcuts to retrain your brain and transform your life. Through stories taken from my own experiences of recovery and renewal, I will show you exactly how I created a mindset that allowed me to pay off my debt, revitalize my business, and remain sober. Maybe most important, this work helped me figure out how to be happy!

 

Change Your Thinking, Ignite Your Life will teach you the importance of mantras and explains how I built mine. Because I am a huge fan of simple shortcuts, this approach asks no more than five minutes of your day and yet, can offer you the sort of life you only dream of now. Get unstuck with this simple, step-by-step set of instructions so you can ignite your life!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin J. Gardner
• Release date: Jan 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215186565

Book preview

Contents

1: Introduction

2: Who I Was

2.1: My Summer As A Caddie

2.2 Business Lessons

2.3 Recovery Lessons

3. Who I Became

4. How I Became Who I Am (My Mantra)

5. Evolution of My Mantra and Daily Mantra Meditation Practice

5.1 Perspective

5.2 Habits

5.3 Momentum

6. My Mantra

6.1 I am Happy!

6.2 I am Healthy!

6.3 I am Wealthy!

6.4 I am Abundant!

6.5 I am Grateful!

6.6 I am Generous!

6.7 I am Intelligent!

6.8 I am Successful!

6.9 I am Sober!

7. Change: A Process That Leads to Progress

8. Make It Happen

9. Conclusion

To all those taking the time to read this in hopes that my experience will be of benefit to you.

1. Introduction

I almost ended up not writing this book because I kept reading books that expressed some of the same ideas that I'm going to express to you. Most of them seemed overwhelming. Most seemed to ask me to do too much. Maybe it’s just me? Maybe I wanted to find a shortcut. This book is for those of you who, like me, want it to be simple.

For those of us who read a self-development book and say, seems logical, or seems like something I should do, and follow one of those thoughts with, but it seems like a big commitment, or, it seems like a lot of work, or, that’s a lot to change and it will take a lot of time, Change Your Thinking, Ignite Your Life is for you. You are the reason I ended up writing this book. I believe different messages resonate with different people in different ways. I noticed that pieces of my experience and message would be included in many other locations, but there was no one source that reflected the perceptions, observations, and habits that have worked so well for me.

I can honestly tell you that the person I was would not have embraced this growth the way the person I am now does. I wasn’t open to advice on how my life could get better. I thought I had it all figured out, which, you will soon learn, was delusional on my part. The fact that you are reading this means you are open to growth, which is the first step in the process. Congratulations! I know from personal experience that my life started to improve when I became open to change. Even though it did not seem like it at the time, progress happened more rapidly than I realized. When I look at the time it took for me to experience meaningful, positive change in the overall context of my lifetime, I realize now that it didn’t take as long as it felt like it did at the time.

Having realized I was making such significant progress, I feel an obligation to share my experience with my fellow shortcutters. Throughout Change Your Thinking, Ignite Your Life, you will hear references to my recovery from alcohol addiction. I hope that because I’m an alcoholic and mention lessons I’ve learned from my recovery that you don’t discount these lessons and think you can’t learn from them. Alcoholism played a major role in driving my life onto a dead end street. It’s the reason I needed to reverse direction, but it’s not the only trap people fall into. Regardless of how you got to where you are currently in your life, the recovery experiences I share here are life lessons that can help you, even if you don’t have an addiction to alcohol or drugs.

I guarantee you can learn a better way of life from, Change Your Thinking, Ignite Your Life! I’ve learned some tried and true habits that have changed my life, and I feel it is my obligation to share them. I must give back what has been given to me.

I’ve seen many books and heard many speakers talk about finding your Why. I have come to realize that my Why is to be successful in a way that allows me to give back and help others. I want to help others have a better life, to grow, and to create lasting memories for themselves and their loved ones.

I will talk about this in more depth in the chapter on I am Generous. I’ll share more about my struggle to realize why I am Generous. Do I do it to truly help others? Or do I do it because it makes me feel good? Or is it both? Does it even matter? Or is it the best type of situation that exists when you can feel good by helping others – the classic win-win situation? I think that is what makes an ideal life for me – when everyone involved can win by doing the next right thing and getting the rewards.

My Daily Mantra Meditation Practice helps me be a better me. It helps me grow and learn and I know it will do the same for you if you make it a daily habit. By the end of Change Your Thinking, Ignite Your Life, you will see how easy it is and how little time needs to be invested to make a huge difference in your life. Remember, I’m a self-confessed short-cutter whenever possible.

My Daily Mantra Meditation Practice is my way of reminding myself who I am. All of the elements of my mantra are important, well thought out, connected, and more than anything they are positive affirmations!

If you are what you think you are, then why would you tell yourself you are anything less than what you want to be?

I’m certain you’ve heard all or at least most of these sayings.

You are what you think all day long (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I think, therefore I am (Rene’ Descartes)

What you think about you bring about (Bob Proctor)

As you think, so you are (Proverb 23:7)

As you think, so shall you become (Bruce Lee)

Where focus goes, energy flows (Tony Robbins)

What you think, you create (Rhonda Byrne)

As you think, so shall you be (Wayne Dyer)

If this wasn’t true, why would so many famous people say this? On some level, you must believe it too, or you wouldn’t have picked up Change Your Thinking, Ignite Your Life. The big question is How? How can I think better about myself? After all, I know all the things I’ve done. I hold resentments against myself. I am not done paying the penalty for what I have done in the past. I believe what others tell me about my limitations.

I understand that. Thinking poorly about yourself has become a habit. Let’s look at this and make our goal, How can I make good thinking about myself a habit?

My understanding of the power of my thinking didn’t happen overnight. It took years (actually decades) for me to understand that I was and sometimes I can still be my own worst enemy.

I guess I got to a point in my life where I was tired of things – at least in my mind – not working out for me.

I seldom got the girl I wanted, and then when I did, it turned out she wasn't the girl I thought she was. I had good jobs, but they were always frustrating because I worked for somebody else. They were jobs! They were work! It was never clearer than when I was on vacation in Mexico. This was before good cell phone reception. I got notified that I had a message at the front desk that read, Call the office. Yep, on vacation. The Friday before I returned for work on Monday, it was crucial for me to Call the office. At 4 p.m. on Friday on my last vacation day, I was being asked what could be done with advertising over the weekend to boost our numbers so we could improve our quarterly results?

This incident gave me the desire to start my own business. After toiling for several grueling years, I found out just having my own business wasn't the answer. I had many lessons to learn about how to run a business before I could realize the benefits of working for myself. It took time, and now I have my own business that enables me to look forward to each day. Now I do business because I want to, whereas before I worked a job because I had to or thought I did.

From the outside, it may have looked like things were good for me, but on the inside, they weren't. I coped with this stress by drinking. Maybe you cope with your life being less than you want it to be in this way or maybe you have other methods of dealing. Sometimes people just accept it as it is what it is and life sucks, and they’re miserable. This state of being isn’t necessary.

Progress is possible, but progress requires change. How many people are just fine with the way things are now? Maybe they think nothing will improve anyway, so why bother? This is what they are telling themselves, and it will come true when they believe it. If you believe, life sucks, then it will for you.

But the truth is that everything can improve. Improvement requires progress, and progress requires change. The whole journey begins with change. Admittedly, not all change is beneficial or represents progress, but how do you know if you don’t try it?

Change starts with willingness and desire. Change is going to happen. Are you willing to make that change positive? Do you have the desire for a better life?

In life you set goals. To achieve those goals, you’ve got to progress. As mentioned earlier, progress requires change. Change is something many people do not embrace – rather they fear it. And to change, you must first have the willingness to do so. It’s no wonder that so many people do not achieve their goals. They fear change, and therefore, do not have the willingness to change, so they will never make progress, and therefore, cannot achieve their goals. I’m sure you’ll notice that there are concepts I repeat often (sorry about that). But I do this because they are of particular importance, and I am adamant they can have a positive impact on your life. Just like they have mine.

Back to my story. I guess I was tired of being miserable. I started reading, and after several books that made me think about my life, I realized that it was time to embrace what Jon Bon Jovi had been telling me for years, It's My Life. For those of us who do not believe in reincarnation, there are no do-overs, so why was I waiting for the life I desired?

I get to decide what I want from my life. And I wanted more! I realized I would never get what I truly wanted if I kept telling myself I couldn’t have the life I dreamed of.

I started by telling myself that if so many other people could have a great life, then there was no reason I couldn’t if I applied myself. I started by setting goals and writing them down. Over time, that process evolved into what it is now. Today, I have a habit that is built on a strong foundation of positive thoughts and visions. It gains momentum every day. This habit is based on my new perspective that is aligned with what I desire and, I now realize, I always had the ability to experience. I now have a life mantra, a life’s mission that I know is achievable because I am living that life today. Today, I am Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, Abundant, Grateful, Generous, Intelligent, Successful and Sober.

Having a mantra has worked tremendously for me, and I know it will do the same for you – if you make it a habit and give it some time to become a habit. That is, it will work if you don’t approach this like the gym membership you buy on January 2nd, use it for a month, and then wonder why you didn’t get in shape. You must believe you can do this. You must believe that whatever you want to happen can happen. People do it all the time. People find evidence to make whatever they believe true.

Politics is a great example of this. During the time I was writing Change Your Thinking, Ignite Your Life, we were going through the changeover from Trump to Biden. (Please don’t cheer or groan depending on your perspective. This is not a political book, it’s just an example). In this realm, especially, whatever you focus on, whatever you want the answer to be, whatever story you want to be told, you can find evidence to support that story or view.

All the former President Donald Trump supporters think that now-President Joe Biden is absolutely wrong on every single thing; simultaneously, all the Biden supporters think Trump is wrong on absolutely every single possible thing. Is that even possible? Can one person be right all the time and the other be wrong all the time? On every single thing? Neither can possibly be true. The truth lies somewhere in between. Perhaps the things that are most important to an individual are more embodied by one of the two men, but there is no possible way that either person can be a total failure all the time.

We all suffer from Confirmation Bias. We all want to be right and can’t believe we’re not. Enlightenment happens when you learn to be open to other ideas. So, find evidence to make your mantra true. Focus on and believe