Learning to think positively

I spend a lot of my time on thinking who I am, why I am, what is my purpose in this world, why I do things the way I do them. Depending on what my actual thoughts are my aikido trainings are also different. If I'm in a good mood then training goes with ease, if I'm having some negative thoughts then training is more like struggling. A couple of weeks ago I have read an interesting blog post about a way of thinking that many people follow, and how to change a not-so-fruitful pattern of thinking.

This is the thinking when we focus on what we don't want instead of what we want. I often find myself following this pattern, as it turns out. I even follow this pattern when thinking about my trainings. For the full article this post is based upon, see Steve Pavlina's blog on Feeling Blessed. The steps of the pattern are as follows:

1. Look around and observe what you’re experiencing.
2. Notice that you don’t like certain aspects of your life.
3. Feel fear, worry, sadness, disappointment, and/or other negative emotions.
4. Think about what it would take to change what you dislike.
5. Notice that it will probably take a huge amount of time and effort to change — and with no guarantee of success. Consider that you might even make things worse.
6. Feel frustrated, trapped, and/or depressed.
7. Do something that makes you feel better. Watch TV. Eat. Drink. Surf the web. Check email. Maybe do all of the above.
8. Feel some relief and comfort now that you’ve distracted and/or drugged yourself.
9. Allow some time to pass, and eventually repeat from step one.

Now I don't really want to discuss how I follow this pattern in my life, but how I follow this pattern with regards to my aikido trainings. Maybe the points about myself are not entirely true and I need more time to think about them but, at the moment, this is how I see things about not wanting to do something. The following list covers the same stages as the list above but I tried to actualise it to my trainings.

1. I look around and observe the way my body moves and my brain thinks when training with a partner.
2. I notice that I don’t like that I'm not stable, centred or balanced all the time, and that my brain and muscles are not relaxed when executing a technique.
3. I feel angry with myself for spending so many years training yet not being able to keep my arms in front of my centre when stepping tenkan (or, mawari ashi, according to the new terminology). I feel sorry for myself, sometimes I don't see myself progressing at all. I don't like that I still haven't been able to empty my mind to a good extent, and that I still have some ego in my thinking and in my techniques which makes my technique far from perfect.
4. I need more time, more trainings and travelling to seminars in order to get better at aikido, both technically and spiritually. The effort needed to improve myself is not decreasing. I need to work more the more I see can be learned.
5. As said, devoted practice, focusing on being relaxed is indeed a lot of work and it takes a huge amount of time and effort, and with no guarantee for success, i.e. that once I will feel confident in my techniques and others will feel the same about me as well. Also, changing the way I do things (implementation) is really different from finding out 'what things I need to do to improve' (plan and design). Back to the original point five, the current situation can become worse if I focus too hard, try too hard (I've already written a blog post about trying too hard).
6. I feel frustrated, trapped, and/or depressed. "why is it that everyone can throw me but I still can't properly throw eventhe 6-5-4th kyu students?!", "It's unbelievable that I can't raise my arm without working from my shoulder!", "It's so hopeless that I ever become a master! My masters got to shodan within 5 years of practice and I'm still at 2nd kyu after 7 years of (effectively) training." - I think it's not hard to see the frustration and all the related negative feelings.
7. What do I do to make me feel better? What is it that sends my thinking to sleep (as next step of the pattern)? I'm very creative at this, as are many people who want to suppress their problems and feelings. For example, when I feel frustrated I usually go and train with people not having tonnes of muscles, typically skinny people like me or female beginner students. Sometimes I go to more skilled or stronger students who then show me the lack of my skills and then I'm done thinking "Well, it's true, I'm rubbish". Typical other things are, although outside of the dojo, wanting to sleep more every day, watching movies every night, putting of things for 'tomorrow'. Fortunately the 'surfing the web' and 'checking mail' problems are taken care of as I didn't let us subscribe to Internet access at home (specifically, to avoid this type of 'wasting time'). I don't 'eat much' but I tend to eat twice or three times in the evening when the dinner is ready, until full.
8. The above activities can effectively guarantee that my mind sleeps as much as it can. Last time I caught myself watching sensei's demonstration but when he said 'hajime' I had no idea what the technique or the attack was. I was looking into the void while being in my internal, self-drugged world. There is still hope though, as when I write articles like this or work on the OnlineAikido.com site I don't feel so much that my brain is in a dark cloud, that the observable world around me has shrunk to a very small size.
9. As time passes after a training, I eventually forget my frustrations and look forward to training again (the time can range from 5 minutes to a week). Sometimes the trainings go really well and I enjoy every moment of them, sometimes I just go back to step one and notice how awkwardly I step those taisabakis.

Have you experienced similar patterns? I hope not but chances are you have. So now I'm trying to summarise the quoted blog post's solution part. I can't evaluate the proposed method as I've just started thinking about it and implementing it.

What Steve suggests is that we shouldn't start with action first. For me it means that I shouldn't try and stop the above process by every means as it is basically peeing against the wind. If the pattern is going on for years it's relatively hopeless to simply leave it and do and think differently.

Steve says the best point to work on changing is when we comforted ourselves. So it's not a problem if I choose to shut my mind until it's not completely shut. In the comforted zone, we may start to think about what we want (a nice and flowing technique, for example) and not about what we don't want (I don't want my shoulders to be at a sky-high height).

"Don’t worry about action just yet. That will come later. Just start thinking about what you want. Dwell on it. Obsess over it. Imagine how you want things to be. Imagine everything in your life working out beautifully."

Fantasising about what you want for about 20 minutes a day should be very helpful. He suggests that it is very important to imagine ourselves doing what we want in present tense as opposed to fantasising about 'ooh, I will be wise and a good master once!'.
For me it's still hard to imagine myself as suggested so I need to improve my imagination and thinking further. Even before reading Steve's post sometimes I had tried to imagine myself doing a technique nicely. It is still hard to imagine doing kotegaeshi the way I'm supposed to. I have two notes about aikido-related imaginations:

1. I think I often made a mistake by imagining myself doing a technique from a third-person view ("that's me there throwing uke so nicely!"). Now I try to use a first-person approach as it is supposed to work more effectively when later I want to implement the technique in a training.
2. Maybe it's just me worrying about details to much but I find it difficult to imagine a flowing technique without completely understanding how it works (or at least believing to have understood how it works :)). This was one of the reasons for joining Connor at OnlineAikido.com because I had known his expertise and ability to explain the smallest details of a technique.

Coming back to how imagination will lead to positive actions, in his post Steve goes on and writes:

"Within a few days of beginning this daily exercise, you’ll notice a shift in your focus, even while you’re engaged in other activities. You’ll notice that you spend even more time thinking about what you want and less time worrying about what you don’t want.

"Feel free to do whatever feels good to you, but don’t force action. It will come eventually. As your good feelings and excitement continue to build, you’ll reach the point where you practically have to hold yourself back from taking action. It will feel unnatural and uncomfortable not to act. But until that happens, just continue the pattern of thinking about what you want for at least 20 minutes every day. If it takes a few weeks to get to the point where you’re positively compelled to act, that’s fine. That’s still superior to running the self-destructive loop for several more years."

Since starting imaginations of techniques (usually doing this right before goint to sleep) I think my approach towards training has improved. I still comfort myself but not so often and don't feel so guilty about it.

I think the whole point of breaking and changing the above pattern of 9 points is to change negative thinking, self-image, etc. into positive, and that a positive attitude makes life better (and not just bearable) and brings positive results. The process of changing to positive is another way of using the Law of Attraction in our favour.

I keep going with the imaginations and hopefully you will see a positive shift in my blog posts.

If you have problems similar to my attitude and thinking issues, perhaps you had such problems before and managed to solve them, I would appreciate to be able to read your thoughts.