The one thing I’ve learned over the many years of my meditating, studying and reading the words of people who really got it, the one thing that is undeniable and it’s something most of us were not taught is that what we think about matters more than anything else we do. That’s why I love to talk about it in just about every episode. It just matters more than a lot of us realize. George Adam’s said it best in a quote I read. He said what you think means more than anything else in your life more than what you earn more than where you live more than your social position and more than what anyone else may think about you. That’s powerful. And I’ve found the more I meditate, the more I’m aware of my thoughts the truly happier I am. We have a lot of thoughts that don’t ever hit our conscious self and they do damage to not only us but those around us too because they are the reason we do any thing we do.
The big problem most of us have is we are simply unaware of most of the thoughts we have. They just float around in our subconscious mind wreaking havoc and we aren’t aware they are even there.
I like to think I am really positive and I don’t have that many negative thoughts and I am generally a happy person. I have done a lot of self work to get there but I have this new journal that Eric, my husband bought me, it has prompts so questions and ideas to journal about. Well, The other morning it had me without giving it much thought just write down every thought that popped into my head, good and bad. Positive or negative. Once I got started I couldn’t stop and let me tell you, it was eye opening. I had as many if not more negative thoughts than I did positive ones. The negative ones had a lot to do with me personally. When the prompts dug a little deeper to see where the thoughts came from, I realized that because I had been a little slack with my yoga lately and also eating a little more sugar because of the holidays….I wasn’t feeling so great about myself and my thoughts let me know that which is also why I’ve been kind of hard on myself lately. Ugh. I didn’t realize it went that deep.
So I had been going along beating myself up a bit in my head without realizing it which was causing me to feel frumpy and haggard and could have caused a lot more problems but now that I am aware of it, I can begin to handle them. I can also do what I have done this week so far and get my workouts back on track and my eating back on track. For the last few days I’ve been on point and I can tell my mood and my thoughts are better already.
Some of those subtle thoughts that I wrote down also involved my family and if you think negative thoughts will affect your mood, wait until you see how they affect the way you treat your sister or your husband. Seriously. If you’ve been having issues with self esteem or issues with your relationships, look no further than your own mind because that’s where the trouble starts. And when your busy and we all are, it gets worse. The most important thing you can do for your self, your relationships and your life is to be really honest with yourself about your thoughts, brutally honest. That’s what it took for me and I meditate almost every morning and I still wasn’t aware of some of those deep down negative thoughts I was harboring. It’s a wake up call for me and I hope by extension, it will be a wake up call for you.
My challenge for you today is to take 15 minutes out of your day today and just journal every single thought that comes to mind. Good or bad. Write it down. Don’t hold back, write down even the ones that seem awful. I had a few of those too. Getting them down on paper will show you your mind and the work you still have to do. It will also show you where your head probably is when you’re busy and not being fully aware of your thoughts. It’s true that we have 50- 60,000 thoughts a day, and like it or not 80% of them are negative. It’s only by being aware of them that you can change them. Free journaling every thought that pops in your head is a good place to start. I’m going to do that every morning for the next week and see if they get better, I’ll keep you posted. We are all in this together, you make yourself better and you are making the world around yo better too. I love you for that. Share this with 3 mindful people, I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days!
