There is nothing more important in the world than working on understanding how valuable you really are.

Every day we are reaffirming what we think about ourselves. Our thoughts are powerful and also automatic. We have about 70,000 thoughts each day and the majority of them are automatic. They stem from the beliefs we have. If you tend to have more negative thoughts you will inherently produce what Dr. Daniel Amen calls ANTS – automatic negative thoughts.

It might feel like your negative thoughts are keeping you safe, but what they are really doing is holding you captive in a vicious cycle of stress and resulting misery.

How can you exterminate these ANTs in order to up level your inner dialogue?

1. Awareness is always number one! Catch yourself when you say things like, always,” “never,” and “every”. These usually lead to ANTs.

2. Challenge them! Don’t let them limit your life. What if you forced yourself to think of different positive scenarios. Even if it seems hard at first it’s necessary to retrain your brain to look for the positive instead of focusing on the negative.

3. Replace them with PAT. Positive Active Thoughts. You have the power to take control of your mind and change your perspective to make the world a better place and not feel like a victim.

Your beliefs about who you are and the world you are living in determine your thoughts and the actions you take. You don’t have to feel disempowered in this world. No matter how challenging things may feel practice the belief that things are happening to FOR YOU not TO YOU.