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One of the most ignored and yet devastating epidemics of our time is affecting millions and millions of people every day and you may be one of them. The symptoms of this epidemic are also its horrible lasting effects. This epidemic is keeping people stuck in poverty, ill health, frustration, loneliness and unemployment. No one is safe from it because it doesn't play favorites. And, it is driven by the most powerful force in the world.

The epidemic I am talking about is negative self-talk and the most powerful force in the world driving it is your mind.

The reason this epidemic is so invasive is because negative thinking lives on the other side of the coin, so to speak. It all comes down to which side of the coin you have programmed yourself to focus on. As Buddha so eloquently describes, 'What we think, we become.' 'All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.'

So, no matter what you believe to be true about you or your circumstances, you are right. You are the creator of your experiences and if you are plagued by automatic, negative thoughts that skew your perspective, you end up creating a world and a life filled with everything you don't want instead of what you do want.

The long-lasting effects of the negative thinking epidemic are a life filled with struggle, sadness and hopelessness. But the most devastating fact is that this is one epidemic that can be treated right now, today, with a 100% success rate, and yet very few people are aware of how to do it.

The Law of Attraction, based on the science of Quantum Physics, says, 'That which you focus on is what you attract back into your life.' The universe doesn't assess good versus bad. It simply reads what you are focusing your energy and attention on and gives you more of that.

So, it makes perfect sense that if you are programmed with automatic, negative thoughts that constantly berate you, you have a very good chance of attracting more negative experiences into your life. If you constantly focus on what you don't want to happen, the universe only knows what you are focused on, and gives you more of it. Meaning, if you are focused on not going bankrupt, or not getting a speeding ticket or not screwing up that huge deal at work, the universe sees the focus being on bankruptcy, a speeding ticket and screwing up the big deal. You create that which you most want to avoid. And all because you have never been taught how to powerfully direct your amazing and brilliant mind.

One of the main catalysts for negative thinking is fear. It is the fear that something is not going to go well or the way you expect it to go that creates a lot of the negative talk that pops up in your mind.

No one in the world is free of fear. Fear is a natural emotion that all humans experience. It is actually a great thing for keeping you safe in the world. At the same time, fear that takes over the mind is the first stage of the negative thinking epidemic.

When the same negative messages pop into your head over and over and over again, you begin to really believe they are true. And suddenly, every action you take in your life reinforces these messages. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you are like most people, you know you are being affected by negative thoughts, but you also believe you have tried everything that is out there to battle this epidemic. You've tried positive affirmations for 28 days straight. You've sent your negative voice 'on vacation.' You've even had internal arguments with those negative thoughts, but nothing changed. I know you've tried, because I tried too and ran into the same frustrations and lack of results.

The first thing you have to do is give yourself credit for what you have done and for what you are doing right now. You are reading this article and that says, somewhere deep inside of you, you know there is something you haven't tried. Where there is hope there is possibility.

You are right. There is something you haven't tried. And, the reason you most likely haven't tried what I am going to share with you is because you have been simply doing what you have been taught. You were taught that when something isn't working, isolate it and fix it. Since you live in a society that is driven by quick fixes, it is very easy to get caught up in focusing on the symptoms of an issue rather than the source. The symptoms are much easier to spot and they do give the illusion that they are running the show. Symptoms are what millions of books are written about every year. Symptoms are what the conscious mind can easily grab a hold of. However, the subconscious mind is where the actual source of your negative thoughts is found.

The subconscious mind is the 88% if the mind that keeps you alive and houses all of your beliefs and behaviors that assist you in living your life. Even if consciously you may think something isn't working, subconsciously, you are creating exactly what you -- or at least a part of you -- 'wants.' The key is learning how to align what you consciously want with what you are subconsciously creating. And the only way to do that is by going to the source.

When a person is sick, there are many symptoms that can show up indicating that something is not right. Now, as you know, treating the symptom is not going to get rid of the actual problem. For example, if you break your right arm, the symptoms of that break will show up quickly. You may have stabbing pain on the whole right side of your body. You may feel dizzy and sick to your stomach from trying to deal with the pain. Your breathing may become shallow because your body is doing everything it can to survive. You are aware of all of these feelings consciously. However, you don't actually feel the broken bone. You feel the consequences of the break. Your body, though, knows your bone is broken and therefore it is happily creating all these other symptoms in an effort to begin healing you while also giving you important messages regarding the problem. Now, if all you do is focus on the symptoms and take a massive dose of pain medication to numb your symptoms, you will still h!ave a broken bone in your arm. Without going to the source, which in this case is your broken bone, you cannot take care of the real problem. No matter how often you take your pain medication, the effects of the temporary fix wear off and you feel the pain again.

This works in the exact same way with negative thinking. You may have financial struggles, terrible relationships and poor health as a result of how you are thinking and perceiving your life, but fixing the symptoms of the problem will not fix the problem. The problem lives in your subconscious mind. The part of you that is creating negative experiences is doing so for very specific reasons that are actually with your best intention in mind.

Yes, I said with your best intention in mind. Although the outcome of what you are creating is not consciously what you want, subconsciously there is something else going on. There is a deeper reason why you have chosen to attract what you are attracting into your life.

It all sounds a bit paradoxical. You are a very complex being. The most important job of your subconscious mind is to keep you alive. Nothing is more important than that task. Now, the way that you keep yourself alive is done through the obvious ways, heart beating, blood pumping and lungs breathing. Another way that your subconscious keeps you alive is through the development of beliefs and behaviors. Creating beliefs allows you to make it through the world in an efficient and safe way. Beliefs create a foundation from which you can make decisions and choose how best to act.

What happens, though, at very early ages, is you create beliefs that may or may not still serve you as you get older. As a child, you have limited resources at your disposal, thus when you create a belief, it is often out of the need to protect yourself with your limited resources. Also as a child, you are far more open to the messages that are given to you by authority figures, namely your parents or guardians. There tend to be a lot more authority figures when you are young and, thus, you get exposed to many ideas and beliefs that you may not completely assess before adopting.

For most adults, though, challenging beliefs, that you created when you were a child, is not something you often do. Mainly because you aren't really aware that you even have these beliefs. Thus, when you are faced with a situation, usually you don't have to think about your response. You simply react as you always have. You may remember times when you thought, 'Why did I do that or say that?' The reason is that you didn't think about it. Your automatic reaction is well ingrained in your subconscious. Your subconscious thinks this response has always worked in the past and that means safety, so no need to change anything.

The problem occurs when your automatic thoughts are negative and limiting. When you constantly are telling yourself messages that no longer serve you (if they ever really did), you create and attract more of what you don't want. Consciously you know something is not right and yet you keep doing the same things, hearing the same messages and creating the same negative experiences.

The only way to change your experience is to go to the source. The source is your belief around any given thing. And, the only way to get to the source, which lives in your subconscious, is to by-pass the conscious mind.

One of the most important discoveries I have ever made in my life is the discovery of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, also known as NLP. NLP is a form of advanced communication that not only teaches you how to communicate with others on a very deep and connected level, but how to communicate with yourself, most specifically, your subconscious, where your beliefs are structured.

NLP can assist in making changes that you otherwise may never be able to make. However, before you can use NLP, you must first know what isn't working and what you would rather have in its place.

As a strong believer in process and systems, I developed the answer to this epidemic of creating a life you don't want to be living. This process includes key philosophies, exercises and techniques systematically combined to rid you of the negative thought epidemic once and for all.

The first step in any process is knowing the foundation from which you are creating. Understanding the rules of the game makes playing the game that much more fun and easy. The foundation for creating a life of what you want and not what you don't want means learning and understanding the laws of the universe and specifically the Law of Attraction. These laws open you up to possibilities that otherwise would never have crossed your mind. These laws provide freedom where chains and limitations now exist.

The next step is knowing where you are starting. If you don't know where you are, you will have a very hard time knowing how to get where you want to go. Awareness is the most powerful tool you can use with your mind. Becoming aware of what automatically pops up gives amazing insight for how best to approach your journey into your subconscious mind.

After you know where you are, you have to know where it is you really want to be. You may think you have a really clear idea of this because this is what you want in your conscious mind. However, what I have found is that most people are far more clear on what they don't want then what they actually do want. And like we talked about earlier, when you are focused on what you don't want, the universe gives you more of it. It is imperative to really dig into every aspect and area of your life and give yourself the opportunity to articulate what you do want. When you have a map, you are much more likely to get to your desired destination faster.

Only when you know where you are starting and know where you want to go can you then begin determining where the disconnect is happening in your subconscious. This is when NLP can become the most life-changing tool available. Removing what no longer works for you is the first step. The second is replacing that belief with one that does empower you. This is why you have to know what you do want. You don't get rid of beliefs and behaviors. You replace them.

Lastly, to cure the negative thinking epidemic you must remain focused on what you want in order to keep attracting it. This sounds easy, but I am sure you have noticed that it is not!

Focusing is also a process. Changing negative thoughts to empowering thoughts of what you want is not something you do once and you are done. However, the great thing is that after you learn how to do it, you don't have to keep learning something new to keep up. You just have to practice. And, in the process of practicing, you are continually taking action that is attracting more of what you want and much, much less of what you don't want. It is the best of all worlds.

If you stay infected with negative thoughts and do nothing to stop this epidemic from spreading through your whole life, you get farther and farther away from ever living the life you came here to live. However, if you learn this system and begin the curing, you take a step closer to the amazing life you know in your heart is possible.

Learning to direct your mind and take full responsibility for your life is the most empowering thing you can ever do for yourself. I know because I found this system to cure myself of this same dis-ease. There is no reason to go another day infected by automatic, negative thinking. The cure is yours to have.

Copyright 2005 Melissa Quiter