How To Change Your Thoughts To Change Your Life's Trajectory, According To An Expert

Discover how your limiting thoughts and beliefs may be holding you back.

By Hilary DeCesare — Written on Mar 19, 2021

Photo: getty

mirrored image of happy woman lying on the grass

Could limiting thoughts and beliefs determine your life path? Can you learn how to change your thoughts and ultimately change the direction of your life?

The answer is yes.

Ask yourself this question: "Am I causing the effects in my life?"

Star Rose Bond has an incredible story of not only surviving but thriving against all odds. A child of chronic instability, including alcoholism, poverty, and sexual abuse, she wound up incarcerated and later on the streets.

Those experiences led to her focus on what was actually holding her back. The answer? Her own limiting thoughts and beliefs.

Today, she is a licensed psychotherapist, speaker, and personal coach with a graduate degree from Columbia.

As a trauma expert, she shows others how to turn their lives around by changing their thought patterns and the core beliefs that hold them back.

Here are 4 tips on how to change your thoughts for the better, according to an Expert.

1. Start with you.

When Star was struggling to relaunch her life, she knew that the only thing she had control of was the relationship between her and herself. This realization happened when she was still young.

As she matured it allowed her to take accountability for her actions — and her future.

In order to change courses in your own life, start with the relationship between you and yourself. Be willing to own up to your role in your life choices. Only then you can create and cultivate change.

2. Stop blaming everything and everyone else.

It’s time to stop relying on everything — and everyone — else outside of yourself to define you. In the end, you are responsible for your own actions — and reactions.

When you stop blaming where you are in life on outside influences, a shift happens. Over time, what’s happening on your inside gets reflected in what’s happening on the outside.

And that’s when transformation really begins.

3. Recognize your place.

It’s important to note that while our life story does sometimes lead to resilience and empowerment, not everyone has the resources to get there. This means that in some cases, outside influences can impact your journey.

Star was a poor person with an uphill climb, but she had one privilege some others don’t — she’s white.

While earning her graduate degree at Columbia University, she was a single mom living on food stamps. One day, she was in a classroom discussing social services and their impact on low-income participants — her very own circumstance!

Sitting next to her classmates, many groomed for the Ivy League, she listened as they tried to discuss a topic they had no first-hand experience with.

Their responses shaped her own journey and helped her deal with some of the self-limiting beliefs she was holding onto.

Today, Star has been studying race, gender, and class for the last 15 years and she recognizes her place in our society. Her advice is to recognize your place, too.

Be humble and listen to the voices that don’t look like you or come from where you come from. Open both your heart and your mind to their stories.

We all still have so much to learn. It’s a continuous conversation, but holding that space will guide you on your own journey while honoring others.

4. Don’t let your thoughts become your reality.

Think about this statement: Your reality tomorrow is what you’re thinking today.

Negative thoughts can become your reality if you let them. But you have the ability to change your thoughts! Be willing to interrupt the ones that no longer serve you. That’s resilience and empowerment.

Commit to the constant conversation with yourself. In this way, you can bring awareness into your everyday experience so that when you think of a negative thought or repetitive self-criticism, you can intercept it and pivot in a more positive direction.

5. Explore your beliefs.

We all have a handful of core beliefs, some of which are negative. Do any of these find their way into your thought pattern?