Hello and welcome back to The Joy Within’s podcast. Today I want to talk about a fundamental principle that – if you learn how to work with it – can make it much, much easier for you to think positive and productive thoughts. Because if you prioritize this, you won’t have to try to be more positive. You won’t have to force yourself to think something that sounds good. Positive thoughts will just come to you naturally, effortlessly, as you go about your day. But, you have to practice this technique.
It’s a process I like to think of as stacking thoughts in your favor. You can’t guarantee that you’ll never have another negative thought, but you can make it massively more likely that your next thought will be positive, because you can train yourself to allow calm, inspiring, and fulfilling thoughts to dominate your mind.
The technique has everything to do with the way you focus. Now, you’ve probably already heard that you get what you focus on, and when it comes to our individual happiness I always say that when you focu on the joy that is already present in your life, your world becomes more and more joyful. But, we don’t often think about the mechanism behind that and how we can use it to consciously create a better state of mind for ourselves.
And you can use this whenever you want to feel happier, more peaceful, more fulfilled, or more empowered or productive. The method is versatile. How you use it is up to you.
So, at it’s core, this technique of thought-stacking is about learning how to spontaneously generate your next thought to be more helpful than the last.
To do this, begin with any thought you choose. I’ll use an example to practice gratitude. You might like around and say something like “I like that flower.” Now, the way most people practice gratitude they might say that or maybe write it in a journal, and then move on. So they’d say “I’m grateful for this flower” and then they’d immediately look for something else. “I’m grateful for my family. I’m grateful for the sunny day today.” And so on and so forth.
And, there’s nothing wrong with practicing gratitude in that way. It’s still training your mind to look for positive things in your life, and that’s good.
But, this is The Joy Within, and we’re not going to settle for your average gratitude practice. We can do better. We can make it more powerful, so you don’t have to look for these thoughts, you just feel inspired to them.
To do that, we’re going to stack our thoughts. We’re going to use repetition to trigger a stronger emotional response within us. This raises our energy and builds momentum, so each subsequent thought becomes easier and easier.
It might sound like this.
“I really like these flowers. No, really, they’re actually quite beautiful. I’m so lucky to have them here. I’m so lucky to be able to look up from my desk and see such exquisite beauty right in front of me. I like looking at them. I like taking a moment to appreciate them. The petals look so soft and inviting. The colors are so distinct. And the smell, the smell is really, really nice. I’m so grateful for them. It’s so wonderful to have these flowers here.”
Now, ask yourself: how does that feel?
It only took a few seconds but I’m betting it completely changed your state. After a few moments, your energy lifts and you start to feel on a roll. Each thought starts to flow into the next, without you needing to think about it.
And if you keep this up, you may find yourself branching out, feeling inspired to think positively about other subjects, but all in a way that is effortless, natural, and flowing.
The key here is in the repetition. Just start repeating the point of gratitude in slightly different ways, from very slightly different angles. If you were to analyze what you’re saying — don’t analyze it, but if you were to do that — it would seem redundant. And that’s the whole point. You’re repeating thoughts long enough to build up the energy behind them. This kickstarts your momentum, and pretty soon better and better-feeling thoughts just come. That’s thought-stacking.
I used a simple gratitude example to illustrate this here, but I want to be clear that you can do this with any subject, and kickstart any emotional state that you choose.
If you’re a Happiness University member, you can find more on how to practice this – how to get really, really good at building momentum – in our path of positivity, and I recommend you check out the positive energy rampages for more guided examples using this process. Just sit back and listen to them as you would a meditation, letting the words flow over you, raising your energy.
You can practice this technique wherever you are. Just keep repeating related thoughts about something, until you feel inspired to your next thought. Keep your focus long enoguh to feel that next, better thought start to arise naturally within you.
Like I said before, it takes a little bit of practice to get the hang of it, but if you stick it through I think you’ll be amazed at how easily it allows your energy to unfold.
