Are you ready to tie up that past before you start a new beginning? It’s said that “what goes around, comes around.” Hopefully, that implies something aboutan artists palatte of colors with a paintbrush meaning you are the artist of your own experience of reality & can thus start a new beginning any time you wish cycles and learning. But most importantly, it guides us to discover our ability to get out of the grips of unconscious habits. And this means we have a way to tie up the past before you start anew.

Our personal bent toward polarization is one of those unconscious habits. You know. Those times when you called people who disagree with you ‘stupid’, or ‘an idiot’. Maybe you thought it was harmless or funny. But on second thought, you can see that thinking and speaking in a polarized fashion is a part of the problem and not the solution.

With the advent of the new year, almost everyone takes a moment or two to contemplate the past and pull up a few new possibilities for the future.  But sometimes, we don’t pay attention to how the past and future are tied together.

We forget the past leaves its imprint on the future’s palette of possibilities. We neglect to take charge and make sure the imprint on the future yet to come is what we want it to be – and not just a repeat of the past as it has been. How to do this?

1st:  Take Charge Of Your Attention

First, you need to rein in your attention. Attention is powerful and essential if you want to start a new beginning. Where you place it makes a difference to what unfolds inside of you and outside of you as well.  Pull your attention back from remembrances of the past that you don’t wish to repeat. If you meditate, you’re ahead of the game. This is especially true if your practice revolves around bringing your wandering mind back to a specific anchor point, like the feel of your breath at the tip of your nose, or the rising and falling of your belly that happens with every breath. Attention allowed to roam freely reflects an undisciplined mind and will be of no help to you in creating a future different from your past.

someone is painting an orange without any color with a paintbrush using orange paint meaning you can create your own way of looking at the thing called an orange or your life so yo can discover your ability to start a new beginning

2nd:  Take Charge Of Your Imagination

Once you’ve harnessed your attention and brought it back to the moment, take charge of your imagination. Start to consciously create images of what you want your future to be as if it is already so. If you want money, make images of your bank account full.  If you want to be thin, make images of yourself looking the way you want to appear.  Then step into that image and imagine how it feels and then, live from that feeling as if it already your reality. The brushstrokes of your imagination are very powerful.  But these desired images & feelings alone are not enough. Maybe you’ve already given it a try and experienced this for yourself. So what’s missing?

3rd: Take Charge Of Your Internal Dialogue & External Speech

Most everyone has a running stream of internal dialogue. It’s usually made up of judgments about yourself & others. We all wonder why things are the way they are. We make up arguments in the privacy of our minds for why our opinion is better or more right than another.  On and on it goes, non-stop from the moment your eyesan illustration of an open book with one side showing a desert and burning flames and the other side of the open book showing a beautiful tree blooming, a picnic spread on the grass and a flowing pond to indicate what you focus on is how you things will appear to you - you can start a new beginning regardless of the past if you know how you created the past open in the morning until they close at night.

If you want a new beginning, a fresh start, this is one of THE most important creative elements. What goes on inside your head has a lot to do with what shows up in your daily life.  If you only pay lip-service to this component of creative change, your chances of success will plummet. Use your attention and your imagination to help you build better subjective dialogue and objective communications.

Be positive, but not at the expense of ignoring the present reality of what it is you wish to change. It takes a fine balance, a lot of awareness, and resuscitating your commitment to that new future. It’s in your hands every time you speak to yourself or others.

4th: Never Give Up Starting A New Beginning

Once you decide to give it a go, you will save yourself a lot of heartaches.  Understand that you will have to engage in these three ‘take charge’ steps perhaps 50 to 100 times in a day.  Sometimes it can even happen in a single hour. When whatever is going on in the present starts to get you down, these three ‘take charge’ steps will be absolutely key to your eventual success. If you want to start anew, you get to practice starting fresh over and over again and again, moment to moment.

5th: Get Your Support From The Inside

Many people try to use external means to support their efforts – like creating lists, videos, attending support groups, listening to motivational audios, etc.  These are good, for sure. But in reality, the best support you can get is from going inside and accessing the strength and courage you need to engage in that act of disciplining your attention, imagination, and internal dialogue.

No one else can do that for you – and it is what has to be done.an image of a head that has within it the words Retrain Your Brain to indicate that is what it is your job to do if you want to create a new and different future

The Power Of Discipline

Tying up the past before you start a new beginning means taking charge of your attention, imagination, and subjective dialogue.  The past is over and the future is not yet here.  To create a new beginning, you have to retrain your brain to think, see, feel, and speak that way.

When you use the steps above, you can consciously finish with the past and begin the creation of your new future in the present moment of now.

The power of disciplining your attention, your imagination, and your speech is no different than disciplining your muscles. Disciplining these three powerful creative essentials to do what you want them to do can’t be overestimated.a cartoon figure balancing on his belly on top of a blue ball indicating balancing is the key

And when you end up having to do it 100 times in a day, over and over, don’t beat yourself up.  This is totally normal and necessary. Our attention,  imagination, and internal dialogue have been running wild, free to go where they wish, seemingly forever.

If you want to start fresh with a new beginning, these are the first steps to consciously harnessing the power of your creative potential. You have the power to purposefully direct your creativity toward creating the life you truly want to live.

Give it a go and experience what happens.  But remember to hang in there.  I won’t lie. It is challenging. And it does takes time and effort. BUT the payoff is greater than you could ever imagine!

Much love,
Ragini

 

Images courtesy of www.Pixabay.com & www.Morguefile.com

First published in 2015 on RaginiMichaels.com