Observe Your Mind And Question Your Thoughts …
With the mind you must become its observer. You must watch and take note of thoughts and emotions as they come into your brain.
Objectively start to judge them and the responses they create throughout you and your entire body. For example, are they making you feel physically tense, shaky, tired or weak?
Are these thoughts even genuine and appropriate reactions for the situation you are in? Or are they just automatic repetitive responses coming from what your subconscious has been conditioned to believe (from past experiences or from the influences of other people, society, media and television).
Unfortunately, so much of our state of mind is no longer our natural behaviour. It is constantly manipulated and abused by today's world. Social media, television and many of the people in charge seem to be leading us in very wrong directions.
With the mind you must become its observer. You must watch and take note of thoughts and emotions as they come into your brain.
Objectively start to judge them and the responses they create throughout you and your entire body. For example, are they making you feel physically tense, shaky, tired or weak?
Are these thoughts even genuine and appropriate reactions for the situation you are in? Or are they just automatic repetitive responses coming from what your subconscious has been conditioned to believe (from past experiences or from the influences of other people, society, media and television).
Unfortunately, so much of our state of mind is no longer our natural behaviour. It is constantly manipulated and abused by today's world. Social media, television and many of the people in charge seem to be leading us in very wrong directions.
So, examine all your emotions as they appear in your mind; think about them logically and rationally, and question them to see if they are really in your best interests. Then after reflecting on them, decide if these thoughts are more useful or more harmful to you.
If they are not good for you then start to practice ways to drop these harmful thoughts from your mind.
There are two steps needed to start to remove negative thoughts from the mind – one is awareness and the other is practice.
The first step - awareness, allows us to wake up; to stop living our lives on auto pilot. It helps us to really question our thoughts, emotions and behaviors; to question what they are and where they are coming from, then to deeply understand whether they are good for us and for other people around us, or are they instead just damaging our health, our happiness and our lives.
If they are not good for you then start to practice ways to drop these harmful thoughts from your mind.
There are two steps needed to start to remove negative thoughts from the mind – one is awareness and the other is practice.
The first step - awareness, allows us to wake up; to stop living our lives on auto pilot. It helps us to really question our thoughts, emotions and behaviors; to question what they are and where they are coming from, then to deeply understand whether they are good for us and for other people around us, or are they instead just damaging our health, our happiness and our lives.
For example, if we truly think about anger and its consequences, we need to ask ourselves do we really want to be controlled by this emotion or to have to deal with the pain that it often brings.
There is a famous saying by Buddha that holding onto anger is like holding a hot coal in the palm of your hand with the intent of throwing it at the person who is annoying you – you may hurt them but in the process you will hurt yourself too.
In nearly all cases anger won’t lead to the best outcome in an argument, instead it quite often leads you to say and do things you would not if you had stayed cool and clearheaded. Later you will most likely start to regret your reckless actions, wishing you could take back what you had said.
Or how about angers effect on the other person, they often feed off the strong emotions coming from you and it gets them all riled up and aggressive as well. Now two minds are acting irrationally and all common sense and reasoning disappears.
But instead if you can control your emotions (prevent anger) and stay calm and focused you will find your mind can logically think its way out of a problem and come up with the best solutions for all involved.
There is a famous saying by Buddha that holding onto anger is like holding a hot coal in the palm of your hand with the intent of throwing it at the person who is annoying you – you may hurt them but in the process you will hurt yourself too.
In nearly all cases anger won’t lead to the best outcome in an argument, instead it quite often leads you to say and do things you would not if you had stayed cool and clearheaded. Later you will most likely start to regret your reckless actions, wishing you could take back what you had said.
Or how about angers effect on the other person, they often feed off the strong emotions coming from you and it gets them all riled up and aggressive as well. Now two minds are acting irrationally and all common sense and reasoning disappears.
But instead if you can control your emotions (prevent anger) and stay calm and focused you will find your mind can logically think its way out of a problem and come up with the best solutions for all involved.
However, anger is not alone, most emotions be they sadness, guilt, fear, jealousy, bitterness, disappointment or the like, only produce negative consequences and detrimental effects for both you and those who are around you.
Examine them all, and with awareness, then one by one let all those negative emotions go from your mind and from your life; leaving you to embrace only the ones that actually help your body in a positive way, that is the emotions of happiness and love, they are the only ones you truly seek.
When we drop negative emotions from our present it can also have a big impact on our past too. Our memories quite often have many emotions attached to them. For example you will have lots of past memories lodged in your brain that make you angry when you think about them. You could pay a psychiatrist a fortune to sit with you and talk you through resolving each one of them; this would also be a very painful and disturbing experience as each old memory is rehashed and felt again fresh in your mind.
But instead if you can change the big picture, the way you see and understand emotions, then your mind will begin to work in a different better way. In this case if you can resolve and change your beliefs regarding the validity of anger and how it actually harms you rather than helps you, then you will find (as you drop anger) that all past memories you are holding in your subconscious which are tainted by anger will begin to diminish; leaving only the lesson to be learned and the wisdom that was garnished from those negative experiences left behind.
Examine them all, and with awareness, then one by one let all those negative emotions go from your mind and from your life; leaving you to embrace only the ones that actually help your body in a positive way, that is the emotions of happiness and love, they are the only ones you truly seek.
When we drop negative emotions from our present it can also have a big impact on our past too. Our memories quite often have many emotions attached to them. For example you will have lots of past memories lodged in your brain that make you angry when you think about them. You could pay a psychiatrist a fortune to sit with you and talk you through resolving each one of them; this would also be a very painful and disturbing experience as each old memory is rehashed and felt again fresh in your mind.
But instead if you can change the big picture, the way you see and understand emotions, then your mind will begin to work in a different better way. In this case if you can resolve and change your beliefs regarding the validity of anger and how it actually harms you rather than helps you, then you will find (as you drop anger) that all past memories you are holding in your subconscious which are tainted by anger will begin to diminish; leaving only the lesson to be learned and the wisdom that was garnished from those negative experiences left behind.
Meditation is a great tool to help your mind to become much stronger in it's ability to become aware of negative emotions as they arise, with that awareness you can begin to challenge and change the often auto pilot type behaviour of the brain.
But if you find it very hard to meditate, then just even going for a quiet walk or listening to calming classical type music can help (it has to be some sort of music that leads the brain rather than like pop music which encourages the brain to sing a long and get actively involved with it).
After a while you will find your mind becoming less noisy and more quiet and peaceful. It is in these contemplative moments then we can find time for reflection and be able to plant suggestions in our subconcious to inform it to behave in a better way; that will enable it to bring more control, happiness and serenity to our lives.
But if you find it very hard to meditate, then just even going for a quiet walk or listening to calming classical type music can help (it has to be some sort of music that leads the brain rather than like pop music which encourages the brain to sing a long and get actively involved with it).
After a while you will find your mind becoming less noisy and more quiet and peaceful. It is in these contemplative moments then we can find time for reflection and be able to plant suggestions in our subconcious to inform it to behave in a better way; that will enable it to bring more control, happiness and serenity to our lives.
