Health & Wellness

Former NZ farmer turned life coach unveils the secrets to positive thinking

Shane Bird talks about the simple steps anyone can take for a more productive and fulfilling lifestyle.

Shane Bird is a former Kiwi farmer turned life coach now living across the ditch in Sydney.

Bird told REX host Dominic George that understanding how people think compared to what people think changed his life and was the concept that inspired him to become a life coach.

"People think 'what I think is the problem'," he said.

"It's not what we think, it's how we think because once we understand the pattern of our thinking we can then shift the pattern that leads to the thoughts that are undesired"

A large part of his work is around turning negative thoughts and feelings into positive feelings through simple and transformative language.

"A lot of people will say 'this has happened to me' but what if you could look at that and say ' this has happened for me'?

"Turning every single thing that's ever happened to you away from a dysfunctional or undesired thing and go well how can I change this into something that can serve me and make me a better person?"

Bird, who first embarked on this journey out of pure curiosity, believes the ideas and concepts taught in these courses should also be implemented in schools.

"Two days in that room when I first started I just thought holy smoke this stuff is so powerful.

"It should be in schools if I'm honest."

Every day, Bird said, the average person has anywhere between 60,000 - 70,000 thoughts. 90% of the thoughts a person has on one day, they will have again the next day and then they will have 90% of the same thoughts they had that previous day the next day again and so on.

A big fan of audiobooks, he told George the medium you use to learn is far less important compared to the actual information you are consuming.

"At the end of the day, our mind is being fed through everything that's in front of us, advertising, youtube, Facebook, the news, the paper that you read, and the music that you listen to.

"When we feed our mind with positive learning information or new helpful information, we are actually starting to think about that today which means tomorrow I'm going to have better thoughts rather than just idly scrolling Facebook or Youtube or reading all the drama in the Newspaper or watching the news."

Find out more about Shane's work on his Facebook page, website shanebird.com or check out his free Facebook group 'The Elite Coach Group'.