Our Thoughts Impact Our Success | Create The Life You Want

Do you struggle with goals? Our thoughts impact our success more than we may think. Staying motivated as you work towards your goals can feel like a rollercoaster at times.

You are either up, down, or feeling twisted around in loops as you learn a new skill. It isn’t always fun and is hard work most days.

Sometimes you set a goal that seems appropriate only to fail miserably and are left wondering why you failed yet again!

The good news is you can learn how to create the life you want by changing the way you are thinking about your goals.

Thoughts Impact Our Success

Dr. Emily Falk, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania studied brain activity and how it responds to positive self-reflection. She found that when people practice positive self-reflection, the pathways in the brain are altered to favor positive reactions to events and opportunities first.

What does this mean?

She gave an example from the study where typical “couch potatoes” were included in this study. It was found that the group that used positive self-reflection and focused on what mattered to them took action to become more active, while the other group consistently said they didn’t need to make the change.

The brain activity for the people practicing positive self-reflection found it easier to make small improvements in their life and be successful in their goals. While others struggled to stay positive in general.

I’m a huge fan of inspirational quotes and reading success stories, learning from those that have paved the way for us. However, life isn’t easy, and understanding how to become more resilient to those peaks and valleys can bring balance.

Dr. Emily Falk discovered that practicing positive self-reflection will allow us to be more resilient. Essentially learning to control your thoughts will impact your success.

Create The Life You Want

Recently I wrote a Goal Setting Series that teaches you how to set and track goals that will help you create the life YOU want. It uses self-reflection to determine what you wanted most out of your life, identify possible barriers that might prevent you from achieving your goals, creating a plan, and then tracking that plan.

The Goal Setting & Tracking Series
1. Rediscovering Your Passions | Goal Setting and Tracking Series
2. Barriers Challenging Your Success | Goal Setting and Tracking Series
3. Creating a Success Plan | Goal Setting and Tracking Series
4. Tracking the Success Plan | Goal Setting and Tracking Series

I want to be clear, goals don’t need to be about careers. I personally use goals for all areas of my life to help me create balance. It is easy for me to work non-stop (I love what I do that much!) but my health and my relationships with my husband and my kids mean the world to me. Because of this, I have personal goals to make sure I am doing self-care and making time for my family.

You may wonder why self-care and family relationships are goals. Isn’t that just a given? Well, to some it may be, however for me I tend to set high expectations for myself professionally and think that I can work endlessly.

It has taken years for me to realize that there needs to be a balance and having goals that include my health and my family helps me create life goals, instead of just career goals.

I always knew that having a positive mindset is necessary for success and, from experience, that staying positive isn’t always easy. Dr. Emily Falk’s study showed how practicing positive self-reflection alters the brain to naturally favor positive responses, which make us more resilient to negative events.

This helps us create a healthier balance in our life between the positives, negatives, and how we respond to them. Using positive self-reflection consistently not only helps us figure out how to simplify our life, but it also helps us balance our thoughts and feelings through our everyday life. Essentially we are making it easier to improve life bit by bit, creating the life we want.

Will you join our Simple Life Journey and start creating the life YOU want?