Ever wondered where your thoughts come from? Where all those perceptions, beliefs and ideas about the world and yourself, were accumulated? Sometimes it feels as if your mind has a mind of its own.
Thoughts are like the perfect getaway where you can be anywhere, be anyone, or do anything in the privacy of your own mind. The convenience of exploring images and creating stories for simple satisfaction can be quite gratifying.
However, they can also be like a never-ending agonizing movie between pauses of sleep. Fear driven, random, obnoxious, stressful, and exhausting. If only there was a way to unsubscribe to this negative chatter. Ironically, you cannot seem to take your attention away from them. They engage you as if you are in some sort of hypnosis.
They are also like your mother constantly in your ear telling you what you should and should not do or encouraging you in what you can and cannot do. Actually, many of your thoughts are your mother. Not to worry, it is all out of love. Even as this ‘love’ follows you around through adulthood well after you have left the cozy, sheltered nest and her ruffled, protective feathers.
Luckily, they are not all your mother. They are also your father, your sibling, your teacher, your aunt and uncle, your neighbor, your priest, and every other adult deemed qualified to insert their opinions about you.
Surprise! Not all thoughts are your own raw, authentic, inspired, and guided musings.
Thoughts are clearly not just a string of words. They are images, perceptions, and beliefs. While we do enjoy reveling in the succulence of our imagery and all of that which the imagination offers, we have a strong desire for the experience of them.
Though a small chunk of what we think are what we refer to as nonsense thoughts that are random and insignificant, there are some thoughts that lie heavily on our hopes, dreams, and desires and often take up a great deal of our mind time. Other thoughts are action based and are filled with routine daily errands, to-do lists and work-related duties. But there are those habitual thoughts that are so well rehearsed they germinate all over every other thought. These thoughts are at the heart of all our daily chatter. These are the thoughts we practice, trust, and believe in that affect every aspect of our life experience.
They are perception of self!
Self-chatter is incessant. Whether we are doing the laundry, buying groceries, or interviewing for our next job, our self-chatter is constantly buzzing like an orchestra of cicadas.
Much of what we think and how we view ourselves influences our choices, actions, decisions, experiences, and future reality. Our internal dialogue is the makeup and narrative of our life story. What we believe becomes our imprint, our personality, our pattern of thought and template of experiences. Therefore, it is imperative we are aware of the kind of conversations we frequently entertain about ourselves.
How others perceive us rarely has anything to do with who we are. What goes in one ear does not go out the other so easily. Their opinions often get bound inside our beliefs without an escape chute and is regurgitated and recycled over and over like dirty laundry.
We hold faithfully to our nonsense garbage that we not only behave this way we allow it to affect our next action, next sentence, next idea and so forth. Sometimes we try to ‘quiet’ these thoughts during significant events or decisions. While we may succeed at times, they often become incredibly loud. So loud in fact that it causes us to become a nervous wreck.
Ironically, the stubborn, stagnant beliefs that do not serve or benefit us seem to be the ones we nurture the most. We have cradled them for so long, we have a hard time knowing ourselves outside of this noise.
But where did we pick up these thoughts? Where along the way did these thoughts become our friend or foe, strength or weakness, success or failure, freedom or bondage?
Let’s face it, there is a whole sea of self-sabotaging thoughts that can surge like a virus during our most vulnerable moments. If we allow them, they can consume any healthy optimism and leave us wallowing in self-pity. Even so, we should not worry; like any virus, it passes, and we are back to our usual, familiar jargon.
But, how much of our inner dialogue is remnant of those adult voices and guided by their opinions? How much of what we believe is still active by our past influencers?
When does someone else’s thought become our dominating thought?
Well, it begins with the stamp of our birth certificate. First a name is established along with gender and origin that automatically places us in categories. From then on as we learn how to operate and function our physical bodies, the filling, stuffing, and plugging up of our future mind chatter begins.
Children’s purity (meaning pre-adult pollutants), curiosity, joy, and eagerness for life marks them as naïve and vulnerable. For this purpose, any opinions, expressions, or perceptions outside the societal and cultural norm are often quickly adjusted and redirected by adults. It is as though a child’s youth is incapable of understanding things adults’ experiences and the struggles they have endured and overcome had taught them. Thus, succumb to a very restrictive and confined people pleasing lifestyle.
Adults are always well intentioned when they provide their long lists of what is appropriate and inappropriate along with the equivalent list of acceptable, expected criteria children are adult-pressured to follow. Such ‘coaxing’ is undertaken as a form of protection paving the way for a brighter and safer future. Or so they believe.
Our strengths and weaknesses are quickly identified through the perspectives of others that are sometimes gently, sometimes playfully and sometimes aggressively brought to our attention. We learn to adopt these views, accept them as our own and mold into the person/personality we have been perceived, told, described, criticized, and complimented we are.
School is where we learn a lot about our physical, intellectual, social, religious, and cultural differences. We learn to scale our intelligence according to criteria, stages, grades, and standards so from a young age we promptly discover how smart or ‘challenged’ we are. In fact, much of our self-knowledge is in direct comparison to another. We have all understood the insinuations when being encouraged to be ‘more or less’ like someone or something.
Unfortunately, ‘different’ can be quite daunting. We discover early on how to adapt to our environment by suppressing as much of what makes us different from the popular classes and categories as possible. This generally does not change much throughout adulthood; we simply advance in our fallacious performances.
Getting to know ourselves through the ‘eyes’ of others is deceptive. They can be unknowingly oblivious to how deflating, discouraging and disempowering their opinions can be. Sometimes they can be so oblivious they haphazardly share and express what pleases or disappoints them about us as if they were talking about the weather. Nevertheless, we are awarded their views and will continue to be reminded of them for as long as we listen.
Though we may be living under the roof of and ‘under the influence’ of our adult advisors for a brief, yet most significant time of our lives; we eventually break free, get kicked out or escape that wonderful opinion packed nest. We all taste that freedom of making decisions for ourselves. It can be a little intimidating at first when we no longer have someone telling us what to do but, our path to self-discovery is sweet.
It is important to note here that if you come from a European background, leaving the nest may not be till you are forty and no decision is your own decision for as long as your parents are alive. You are part of a unit, so you best be prepared for heavy guilt trips, analytical talks, lectures about life and of course the free psychic sessions about your future if you step outside these boundaries.
That true taste of freedom would not be until morbidly speaking, your parents die. And by that time, you have remained under their control for so long, you would only be just beginning your life what others have already lived in dog years. However, you have the luxury of security, home cooked meals, pampering and financial support. It is kind of the trade-off for being under their control. Let’s insert ‘loving’ control for their love is equally as fierce as their possession over you.
Meanwhile, throughout our adult life, we desperately search for this inner being that feels different to that which we have so devoutly practiced. We yearn for this raw self that has been suppressed for quite some time. The self that feels liberated and invigorated yet is declared forbidden. The self that we often attempt to keep quiet and hidden in an effort not to be criticized, judged, or rejected. The self we often attempt to connect with through travel, religion, books, hobbies, and other interests. The self we sometimes go to extremes for and rebel against to release it from the bondage of societal expectation and self-ambush.
However, one thing we all have in common no matter what our situation or circumstance is the freedom to simply think. The freedom to imagine. The freedom to explore and create all that our heart desires.
We also have the freedom to choose; choose that which benefits, that which uplifts, inspires, and strengthens our inner being. In fact, we have such innate freedom to choose the thoughts we think that we could choose to be imprisoned by the worst of them.
To some degree, we are all hoarders of thought. Our emotional attachments to these thoughts keep our grip a little tighter around them. We can even recall our first introduction to them.
“And that’s when my boyfriend said I was fat and pathetic”.
“And that’s the one when my teacher said nothing will come of me”.
“And that’s the one when my father said I’m too naïve to be successful”.
“And that’s the one my boss said I don’t have what it takes to be a leader”.
“And that’s the one society said unless you’re beautiful or successful, you won’t be noticed”.
Somehow, it is these untrue, polluted type of beliefs that are brought to the forefront of our minds while our inner radiant selves get lost in all the rubble. Of course, like any hoarder, the more negative thoughts we accumulate, the more isolated we become from the world and the more distant we become from who we are.
So, it is time to take out the trash!
Letting go and cleaning out the negative beliefs and chatter is a step toward inner relief and a giant leap toward personal empowerment. If a thought does not feel ‘good’ then it is a waste of good feeling space. It does not deserve a spot on our mantel.
For some of us, it may be difficult letting go of thoughts that have been deeply rooted. Even if they are suffocating and cause dis-ease, they have been part of the clutter. That little ‘bad guy’ on our shoulder with the giant sack of negatives is so loud and obnoxious it is hard not to hear him.
Ironically, we grow to love that thing we hate simply because there is some sort of weird security and comfort in knowing what we know due to its familiarity and predictability. As disappointing and hurtful these thoughts may be, it is balanced out with the validation of what we already expect and believe thus, never feel surprised by them. These are the deeply rooted thoughts. The ones that have presented us with an abundance of evidence of that which we believe to be true. Yes, these are the ones that make us feel like multiple layers of garbage.
Note: we all think our way right to the evidence of all things. Even the garbage!
Unless we are quite happy with our self-sabotaging critiques, there is a simple solution to rising above all the smog and feeling the beam of our own light. However, simple fixes for Masterful Creators like us who relish contrast and expansion find them boring. Anything easy is not satisfying. We enjoy hard work and hard play because there is such satisfaction in the process of discovery and creation.
Fundamentally, we all have the freedom and the imagination to make this as easy breezy or as rough and tough as we please or insist.
There is no fantastic, elaborate procedure or top-secret strategy. The solution lies in our profound ability to ignore and forget. Yes, probably the two most difficult tasks for complex creatures such as us. Just like our magnified minds can ignite what is focused upon, likewise anything ignored becomes absent from our experience.
The beauty of forgetfulness is the opportunity for renewal. This is also the junction to expansion for nothing can expand or grow from the same stagnant ideas, methods, or practices.
Attention to anything keeps it active in our mind and as long it is active in our mind, it is active in our experience. The easiest way to decrease the volume of this internal negative noise is to change focus.
Life makes it easy for us. There are only ever two choices. Feeling good or feeling bad. Fear or faith. An optimistic, good feeling thought or a pessimistic outlook. The direction we choose to follow is completely our luxury.
Our opinion matters!
It is always and only our attention to a subject and our opinion about it that impacts our sensory experience of it.
Whether we are focusing on our appearance, our job, financial status or even something that looks scary and ugly; our attention to it will magnify its presence. Our opinion about it will show up through our emotional experience of it.
Thoughts we have accumulated will call out for our attention. However, it is not necessary nor benefiting to dwell on specific chatter that feels miserable.
If we bit into a rotten apple, would we continue to eat it? Would we dwell on it for days and months? Would we talk about it for years remembering how bad it was? Would we allow it to define us as bad decision makers and unlucky rascals? No! Whilst it sounds a little absurd, we do this! We may not necessarily be obsessing over a bad apple however, we often do this surrounding many of our past disappointments, failures, and regrets.
So how are thoughts about other experiences any different? Well, they are not. We just perceive them as invaders and out of our control. Even though we are the governors, commanders, directors, and managers of all that is allowed entry and granted permanent residency in our minds.
So, we took a chunk out of a bad apple. No big deal. We now know what a bad apple looks and tastes like. We learned what we do not want. We learned which tree not to pick from. It gave us guidance and eagerness for something better. And now, a ripe, sweet, juicy, crispy apple will be far more appreciated.
We instinctively look away from something unpleasant, block our ears from something obnoxious, spit out something distasteful, or pull our hand away from something painful. So why are we so stuck on hoarding thoughts that make us feel emotionally terrible?
Because somehow, somewhere along the way, someone convinced us of them. In fact, so convinced that we believe who we are and all that we experience is our pre-paved journey we were imprinted with. Even though, the only pre-paving was pre-conditioned by our elders. The rest was our life-long work of keeping this active and alive. But we failed to understand that feeling ‘bad’ is our indicator of inaccuracy.
Foreign thoughts or not, you are your own responsibility. This is not about adult bashing for all children bloom into those same adults and practices. Pointing blame at the world serves no purpose for no-one can think for you.
You are the thinker, the imaginer, the perceiver, the interpreter, and the decider of your own thoughts. It does not matter where along your physical trail you picked up on some perceptions, judgments, compliments, criticisms, interpretations, and evaluations of you.
What matters is what you choose to believe, hang on to, how you choose to live your life and how you choose to express your inner light.
No-one can know you better than you. No-one can be you better than you. Therefore, no-one should treat you better than you!
When you have been out of alignment for some time, it takes a little practice letting go of preconceived ideas and reconnecting with your brilliance. Basically, it takes some practice not giving a hoot about anyone or anything else outside of you.
Practice makes perfect!
Back in school, rote and repetition was the best learning tool. It helped for information to stick. Advertisements use all sorts of repetitive jingles and catchy phrases to make their product or service more memorable.
Practice truly does make perfect. But you have also literally practiced your way into many of these destructive beliefs that unlearning them can be tricky. Therefore, it is up to you to find your way of ‘practice’ below that serves to benefit and connect you to your authenticity, joy, and love.
Practice choosing better feeling thoughts.
Your feelings are your best guide as they communicate your thoughts and beliefs. When you begin to feel that negative feeling in whatever negative emotion it shows up, it alerts you that you are stepping away from the truth of who you are. When you really care about the way you feel, you will never pass an opportunity to think thoughts that feel good, empowering, and self-connected.
Practice being present.
You do not have to have it all figured out. Setting up your future is not about getting the next six months or six years done today. Your future and past are happening now. What you give your undivided attention to and have an opinion about now is automatically and simultaneously becoming your past and future experience. The momentum of your current thoughts will carry you into your new reality. Your future is the echo and projection of your present thoughts. Therefore, what you think is imperative for it will influence your next inspired action. Be joyful now! Be optimistic now! Love who you are now! As long as you have ‘now’ figured out, the rest will fall into place.
Practice meditation.
Meditation is like the safe, alternative antibiotic for the mind. It eliminates or slows down the negative thought ‘bacteria’ from multiplying. Quieting the mind allows the natural positive flow of your inner being to surface. Maintaining these healthier thoughts by remaining focused strictly on all that makes you feel good is your power potion!
Practice affirmations.
They can aid in breaking the habit of negative chatter and turn up the volume on positive aspects. Affirmations can assist in redirecting your focus until you realize your genius, your grace, and your inner beauty.
Practice writing in a daily gratitude journal.
It can be the new filling, stuffing, and plugging of appreciation chatter. Finding gratitude in things magnifies them and shines a light on all that surrounds you that you have forgotten. It will train your mind to continue to search for more things to be grateful for as your senses become accustomed to the beauty that abounds and surrounds you. It will assist you in realizing and recognizing your fortunes, blessings, and bounties.
Practice nature.
Being outside among nature is like a natural up-lifer. Mama Nature is most certainly an attention grasper and knows how to entertain. She is a great distraction and can charm even the most stubborn of thinkers. Nature can be that gentle reminder that nothing serious is going on and that all is well. She isn’t called ‘Mother Nature’ for no reason for just like your mama she provides that soothing, tender relief. She is like a big, warm hug with just the feel of the sun’s rays or the soft breeze. She will tell you a daytime story by surrounding you with a kaleidoscope of butterflies or invite a choir of birds to sing. Mama Nature is never intrusive. She is simply there in all her wrath and glory, a pure demonstration of absolute authentic beauty and power.
Practice reminding yourself of all that you love about who you are.
Submerge yourself in the fantasy of your greatest desires and dreams. Discipline yourself by only having conversations about things that make you feel good, excited, or inspired. Frequently remind yourself that all is well, and everything is ALWAYS working out for you. Apply these to your everyday routines until you begin to realize them.
Life is an infinite assortment of sensory pleasures. We are but a single product made up of a collection of bi products blended and intertwined.
If all that we think, all that we quarrel over, agree or disagree on, create and destroy is part of the same conscious physical world that we call life and that we co-create together; at the beginning and end of all that is, ever was or ever will be……………whose thought is it anyway?