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Why Is Our Mind Important?
Those who believe they can, and those who believe they can’t are both right. Henry Ford |
What we believe literally creates our reality. If we look at how two people respond to the same scenario we can see this clearly, especially when it comes to being diagnosed with an illness or responding to feedback from a boss. We have all at times decided to “sink or swim” in some situation in life when we could have done the opposite. Learning to respond positively (or at least neutrally) to life events can have a dramatic effect on the quality of our lives.
From an energy perspective every thought we have sends out an energetic signature into the universe. As one of the principles of energy is like attracts like, what we give out the universe gives back to us. This is termed as ‘karma’ or ‘you reap what you sow’. Those who are lucky believe they are whilst those that don’t believe create that reality for themselves. What is important for us to understand, from an energetic perspective, is that we are not victims of life but co-creators of our own reality. We are only ever a victim if we respond like a victim.
So How Does This Work?
Our underlying beliefs and assumptions about who we are and the way life works creates the reality which then feeds into our thoughts. We have thousands of thoughts everyday. It’s believed that over 90% of these thoughts are the same as the previous days. Emotions and the way we feel are the cumulative result of our previous thoughts.
For example it is impossible to feel depressed without having depressive thoughts. Similarly it is impossible to feel truly happy and be thinking negatively.
Crucially how we feel triggers physiological changes in our body. We have all felt the effects of stress and tension in the body as it responded to “I’m stressed/not enough time/I can’t cope” type of thoughts.
Caroline Myss in “Why People Don’t Heal Themselves and How They Can” says “Our biography becomes our biology”.
What
this means is that if you wish to improve your health
or create a different life for yourself it’s time
to realise that you need to control your mind and use
the principles of energy to create a reality you’d
actually like to have.
Similarly Bruce Lipton's "The Biology of Belief" and Dr Hamilton's "It's The Thought That Counts" discuss how our thoughts impact our health and our reality and why its important we use our thoughts to positively impact our body and well being.
Your thoughts can be used to boost your energy levels or deplete them. Positive thinking and outlook gives you energy. Negative thinking and outlook drains your energy.
Exercise: Stand in front of the mirror and look at yourself. Then look at the floor and choose to think negatively for 5 minutes. Look at yourself in the mirror again. What has happened? Has your posture changed? Do you look more or less alive? Can you even bring yourself to look in the eye?
Now repeat the exercise and choose to think positively for 5 minutes. What happens?
How Do I Change My Mind and Create A Life I Truly Want?
There are many tools that can be used to help you do this. The following are simple and effective. Although they are not hard to do, they do require you to be persistent and consistent as they all have cumulative effects. If you are new to these techniques work with one or two at a time. When you can do them easily try another.
Belief- you need to believe that this can work.
Believing is seeing and not the reverse. If thousands
of other people can change how they think (including me!),
why not you?
Affirmations-
this is where you repeat a positive statement again and
again. Over time you trick your sub conscious mind into
believing it. Remember you are what you affirm to the
universe. Choose something short and punchy that is relevant
to you. During an all day assessment centre appraisal
I continuously repeated “I am a strong, powerful,
loving human being”. It not only calmed my nerves,
made me feel good even though I’d ripped my tights,
I reckon it got me the job. There are many books on this
subject including "I
Can Do It" by Louise L. Hay.
Take responsibility - if you have created the life you lead you can create another one. You are always responsible for your response to any given situation. Will you choose to see the gloom or the silver lining? Our thoughts create self-fulfilling reality so choose well. Will you respond with poise and discipline or emotionally react. Work through the four simple questions that make up The Work in "Loving What Is" by Byron Katie. This is a revolutionary and simple way of allowing yourself to find your own truth within instead of blindly swallowing your ind's script. This can be done on line.
Elastic
band - this technique was given to me by Dr
David Mason Brown. The band is worn on the left wrist
above the watch. Every time you have a negative, critical
or judgemental thought about yourself or another you use
the band to ping the thick side of the skin on your wrist.
You then re-think the positive equivalent of the thought.
For example, “I didn’t do that properly. What
a silly idiot.” Requires you to ping the band then
reframe to “I’m good at this. I can
do this.” The ping sends a small pain response to
the brain. This, together with the practice of positively
reframing thoughts, helps you to re-train your mind.
Meditate - this is crucial so it has a whole section to itself. For more information on Meditation CLICK HERE
Live
in the now - your energy and your life is here,
right now. Your thoughts can take your energy into the
past or into the future which can leave you weak in the
present. Focusing on the now allows you to stop the energy
flow back from the past or into the future making more
energy available to you. This means you will have a greater
capacity to self heal and achieve peak performance. Eckhart
Tolle’s, “The
Power of Now” and “Practising
the Power of Now” are the all time classics
in this field. His latest work "A New Earth"
is superb and truly transformative. You can study it on
Oprah.com
Practice
kindness- it really does make the world a nicer
place and as you give kindness so you also receive kindness.There
is even an excellent business book published on the benefits
of niceness to your bottom line, "The
Power of Nice" by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin
Koval.
Gratitude journal - if you already keep a journal, before you sleep take time to list at least 5 good things that have happened during the day. If you don’t have a journal use a notepad, buy a journal or Sarah Ban Breathnach’s purpose made journal.
Some
people find listing good things extremely difficult as
they genuinely believe that nothing good has happened.
I usually tell clients that I don’t mind how low
they have to go, and “It didn’t rain”
is a start. Creating a gratitude journal is one of the
most powerful ways to start to change your outlook on
life and focus on what’s working or good instead
of what’s not.
Have
fun and ‘lighten up’ - making time
to have fun transforms the quality of our lives. What
is fun for you? Do you have any? Fun helps us to ‘lighten
up’, which is to stop taking ourselves and the world
too seriously. This requires a change how we respond
to life around us. Children can be our teachers. When
something happens that they don’t like, they express
it then move on, usually within minutes.
Make
healthy choices and take healthy action - taking
responsibility means knowing what’s good for you
and acting accordingly. Ask yourself- is what I’m
choosing to do going to make me more happy or less? Settling
for less than what you want is not making a healthy choice
towards what you do want. I frequently see this with clients.
For example if you know that you want that “special
somebody” in your life then choosing non-special
people will not get you what you want. Choice is always
simple: yes or no? Nothing releases more positive energy
than taking action towards what you truly want. “Self
Matters” by Dr Phil McGraw or having a great
therapist or life coach can help you with this.
Make
time for self and/or spiritual practice - do
you make anytime for you? Do you have a spiritual life?
Do you even know what you like to do? Finding out what
you like and don’t like can be great fun. Making
time to honour yourself and the life you have is as simple
as taking a bath, listening to your favourite music or
learning to do something you’ve always wanted to
such as sing or dance. I define a spiritual life as taking
time out to connect with something greater than yourself
and your life. A simple walk outdoors in nature or taking
time to admire the beauty of cut flowers can do this.
Pursuing the religious beliefs you may have need not be
done within a religious setting. Volunteering to help
the less fortunate or taking time to speak to a neighbour
may be ways that you can creatively express your faith
and beliefs.
A
large proportion of the people I see may not be religious
but do have strong belief psychic phenomena, angels and
guides. There are many books available on these subjects
including “Ask
Your Angels” by Alma Davies, et al which is
a guide to connecting with your angels and discovering
how to ask them to help. Jerry and Esther Hicks who produced
"Ask
and It Is Given" could easily have changed the
title to A Manual For Life. For those open to channeled
work I whole heartedly recommend this.
