What if everyone could hear your thoughts?
If you’re like most people – that would not be a pleasant experience. In fact, it would probably be a pointedly unpleasant experience. Most people have don’t have control of their mind and are constantly thinking about anything and everything, like:
- “Hmm, I wonder what I’m going to make for dinner. I do have leftover chicken but I don’t really want it again.”
- “Shoot, I need to go to make some reservations for my in-laws this weekend. Where am I going to call? They never like a place I choose. They can really be so difficult.”
- “Today I need to finish my report, prepare for the presentation tomorrow, get that document peer-reviewed, and send out those deliverables. God this is going to be a long day.”
- “What do I want to watch tonight? I just finished that series…there’s nothing good to watch anymore.”
- “Yikes look at him, does he not realize how frumpy he looks in that?”
- “I can’t believe I just said that. I’m such an idiot. Of course, I should’ve known that that’d go over badly.”
Most people tend to be self-critical, sometimes judgmental of others, and overall have many negative thoughts.
Now if everyone could hear those thoughts, you probably wouldn’t want them to hear those particular thoughts and you’d probably want to quickly learn to shift your thinking. But just because people can’t hear your thoughts, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth shifting your thinking.
What you think becomes your reality.
Let me explain. Thoughts have effects whether you’re aware of them or not. There is a feedback loop of what you think will happen becomes more likely to happen. For example, people who believe in themselves tend to succeed versus those who believe they will fail. Your subconscious acts on what you focus on so it will focus on either “success” or “failure” based on your thoughts, and set you up for what you’re focused on. When what you expected to happen actually does like you actually fail when you thought you would, then this reinforces the original thought. This causes you to think even more that you will fail in the future. Thus setting in a pattern of creating in your life what you think, because you will continue to think the same thing.
“Those who think they can and those who think they can’t are both usually right.” – Confucius.
This creates a spiraling effect. If you think you’ll fail – then you do, you’ll continue to think you’ll fail and when you do, you’ll continue to think you’ll fail even more. Or on the flip side, if you think you’ll succeed – then you do, you’ll continue to think you’ll succeed and when you do, you’ll continue to think you’ll succeed even more.
Being able to control your mind is so important because then you can shift your thoughts from a negative perspective to a positive one and create a positive spiraling effect.
If you’re in the boat that so many people are in, of having negative thoughts both about yourself and others-
What can you do to control your mind?
- One powerful tool is meditation. Meditation is not only having a quiet mind but it is learning to focus and harness the mind.
- When you need to “reset” your mind, one technique is to take several deep breaths, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Do this for several minutes and visualize light coming down, in through the top of your head, and filling up your whole body until it is overflowing with light.
- For more techniques, the Modern Mystery School teaches several forms of meditation to increase inner peace, relaxation, and control the mind to overcome negative thoughts.
- Do positive affirmations. Take time each morning to state out-loud things you want in your life, but say it in the present tense like you’ve already achieved it.
- For example, if you’re wanting to be more in shape you can say “I am healthy, strong and in the best shape I’ve ever been in.”
- Express gratitude. At the end of the day, write down with pen and paper at least 5 things you’re grateful for that happened during the day. This will help shift your focus into a positive mindset.
- You can be grateful for your bed because you’re tired. You can be grateful because the sun came out that day. You can be grateful that you made progress towards one of your goals. Anything and everything counts.
Try these three things for a week and notice if you start to see any changes. If you want support being able to make the shifts you’d like, reach out, I’d love to chat with you.
