Thought power
Did you know we have on average 70,000 thoughts a day. As there are 86,400 seconds in a 24 hour day, this means we produce a thought every 1.2 seconds. Now remember, this is simply an average quote. It is probably much higher for the overloaded, anxious minded individual. How much control do you think you have over these thoughts? Are you aware you can catch your thoughts? We have the ability to completely switch them around and re train what I call the mind muscle. In an ideal world, we would like to be programmed to always think in a positive way.
Why is is that some people have that ability and self discipline to achieve and maintain their ideal body for example, yet for others, it is an on going struggle? What have the high achievers got the others lack? Well, we are all humans functioning with the same gifts and abilities, therefore we are all able to succeed if we put our mind to it. High achievers have a sense of vision and clarity who set goals and timelines in order to attain their goals.
Thought power through mind observation!
I want us to start with an exercise of simply catching your thoughts. Our awareness at the beginning has to be turned up to the highest volume. Remember, we are now dealing with the conscious mind. Some of you may be very surprised at what comes up for you with this exercise. Perhaps your not 'literally' aware of your thoughts. I want you to go and stand by a mirror, (ideally full length). Take a good look at yourself and whilst your doing this let your thoughts come up and just witness and observe how many of these thoughts are positive or negative.
What is your mind saying to you? Who else came into your mind? Were you being nice about yourself?
Stay with this exercise for the next few day. I think it is a good idea to write down all the thoughts you hear about yourself. You don't have to do this just by standing in front of the mirror. Start to be on what I call on ''thought duty''. Especially when you are carrying out other tasks. This will really make you live consciously and raise your sense of awareness to the voices and endless chitter chatter in your head.
' This week I'm going to be a bouncer on ''thought duty''. Yes, I will be standing at the gate of my mind watching closely at the entering thoughts. Negative thoughts be warned that you are not on the list! You will be exterminated instantly. I only entertain and welcome positive, sublime thoughts. we all have the ability to be the avatars of our thoughts'.......
Once you have practiced this exercise for a while and taken a mental note of your thought patterns by being the observer, I'd like you to treat your mind as though it is the most, breathtaking, lush green garden. Imagine this garden has beautiful plants and flowers. In fact the flowers are so amazing to look at that even our conditioned have seen colors they never knew existed. What I'd like you to imagine is that this incredible garden is your mind. Now put some gates in front of this garden and keep it protected and guarded. Next, I would like you to imagine that every single negative thought you have is a weed. There is no room for weeds to spoil this glorious place and if they start to pop up, they will have to be filtered out instantly.
This is a great metaphor to get you started in catching your thoughts and stop your mind and body absorbing them. You can also create your own analogy of how you want to protect and guard your mind of harmful, wreck-less thoughts.
When you have any thought, it is conveyed into every single cell in your body. Once this transmits, your body will physiologically be affected by that thought.
There is an intimate connection between thinking and respiration. Also between the mind and the breath. Shallow breathing and fearful thoughts affect the nervous system and your digestive system. This of course affects your respiratory system which eventually effects the adrenals which have to secrete more cortisol to control stress in the body. This will have a knock on affect on your whole endocrine system and all the hormones go out of sync with one another. All this with one negative thought connected to fear. Wow, that is how much power one single negative thought can have.
Remember, this works both ways and in my personal opinion, when we entertain positive thoughts, the outcome is even more amplified on the physical body than anything with negative form.
Positivity always outweighs negativity. I will explain how this works. Imagine walking into a dark room. It is so dark that even your eyes cannot get used to it. What can you do to see? Obviously you light a match or a candle and there you have light. Now let's assume we are in a bright, light room. How can you make that room so dark, that you can't see anything? That explains the shear power of positivity.
This is a grand effective law of nature, darkness cannot stand before the sun.
We cannot always be on guard to control our thoughts, however with practice we have the ability to control our words and with repetition we can master the thoughts of the subconscious. Start by changing one negative thought at a time. Usually it is the first one which pops into your head that has a knock-on domino effect on all the other thoughts which arise from the original source. Catch it as soon as you hear it.
The subconscious mind believes everything you tell it. The aim of these exercises is to reprogram this part of your mind and train it to only entertain sublime thoughts. If you keep feeding positive thoughts to your mind, eventually, your mind will only function in this empowered way. Thoughts gain strength and power through repetition. Just as the same birds of a feather flock together, collective, positive thoughts will start to breed forever.
'Positivity breeds positivity'
From the book 'Fabulous fitness at 40' by Ladan Soltani
