Find and Replace Your Negative Thoughts

You know what a seriously under-celebrated feature of modern life is?

“Find and Replace.”  You know, like in Microsoft Word.  It’s after the new year and you accidentally wrote 2021 a bunch of times instead of 2022?  A few keystrokes and it finds ’em all for you and whooshes in the correct info, neatly.  No one is ever the wiser.

I wish there were more things we could use Find and Replace on.  Find bad habits, replace them with good ones.  How cool would that be?

OK, some things can’t be popped in and out quite so easily.  But wait –

Wouldn’t it be great if we could at least highlight all the fearful, doubtful, over-worried thoughts that keep us from what we want, and with one keystroke replace them with better thoughts?

We can, actually…just not with the keystroke part.  But you can train your mind to highlight the thoughts, and replace them with something better.

Here’s one I hear a lot from readers, students, copywriting clients, everyone really:

“Marketing freaks me out – no one wants to hear from me!”

I bet it’s predictable when this thought comes up:  Like when you sit down to write a newsletter or Facebook post – or even think about doing so.  What if, just as your brain typed out that thought, you calmly paused, then wrote over it:

“Who might need to hear about ______ today?  I’m going to show up for them!”

Ahhh….changing this thought from “no one wants this” to “I’m going to show up for someone who needs it” feels so much better, doesn’t it?  With better results.

If you did that often enough – the “Find” of catching yourself as you think it, and the “Replace” of repeating the same fresh message, eventually you’d get used to simply thinking the new one.  Much like you eventually get used to typing 2017 instead of 2016.

Let’s consider one more, for practice:

“I hate marketing, I feel like I’m just begging for money!”

What could we replace that one with?  Here, you think of something:

___________________________

Here are a couple I came up with:

“I’m so excited to give people something they need.” 

“Giving someone something you have in exchange for something they have is normal.  It starts in the sandbox.  This is no different.” 

I bet your idea is even better!

Remember:  Just because something is automatic does not make it true.  

Maybe pick just one thought to find and replace, and start there.

Replacing negative thoughts about marketing is a critical step, no question. 

Regardless of where you are with marketing, whether you need an online course to give you tools and assignments, or just need to Find and Replace some negative thoughts to get going on what you already know – go tell people about your work this week.

Someone needs you to show up.