If you don’t control what you think, you can’t control what you do!
The most powerful thing that you need to ace your life is already with you – your mind. Depending on how you use it, this can be your biggest strength or your worst weakness. Your perception is nothing but your thoughts or your interpretation of things/ people/ events around you.
Negative or self-abusive, destructive thoughts are not just a waste of time and energy, but also trigger physical and emotional reactions – you could fall physically ill, and could turn grumpy, sulky or sad for no apparent reason.
When you choose to actively take control of your thoughts instead of letting them run amok, you eliminate all the unwanted outcomes of negative thinking. Conscious thought control gives you peace of mind, promotes better health, and lets you enjoy life to the fullest.
Your happiness, your physical and mental well-being is your responsibility. It sure isn’t possible to be in a Zen state-of-mind all the time, we are all humans after all. But we can certainly free ourselves from the shackles of negativity and develop a healthy, positive inner dialogue and make our life a little lighter and our world a little brighter!
Be Aware of Your Thoughts
The first step towards change is to be aware of what needs to be changed – i.e. in this case, your thoughts. Your mindset is made up of your thoughts, and to deconstruct a negative mindset, you need to identify and eliminate negative thoughts. Watch how you respond to what is happening around you or when you engage in reminiscing past events or when you are trying to grasp the future – there is usually a pattern.
Often, the sphere of life where you are not quite satisfied starts affecting other parts of life which are wonderful. Repeated negative thoughts in one failing or failed area of life can start projecting on the good and happy areas of your life. In order to be aware of this pattern, you may try a simple exercise.
Thought Assessment
Divide your life into Physical, Emotional, Social, Financial, Spiritual, and Intellectual spheres. On a scale of 1 to 10, assess how satisfied you are in each of them. You could be excelling in some (scoring 9 or 10), just about satisfactory in some (5 to 8), or performing dismally in others (1 to 4). You now need to notice that the resentment of the areas where you are lagging behind doesn’t let you feel good even about the ones where you might be exceptionally proficient. You may be physically very fit and strong, but that satisfaction might be ruined by your strained relationship with your family/friends. You may be financially sound and doing great in your career/business but that joy might be killed by sourness between colleagues.
You may have it all – good health, good family, good social life and financial stability, but still you may feel insufficient because you are not well-read or don’t have a taste for finer things (intellectually lagging) or not giving back to the society (spiritually lagging).
Make Awareness a Habit
Try and make it a habit to be aware of your thoughts – identify the ones that bother you, and the ones that relax you, and which sphere of your life do they belong to. You will realize that all the disturbing, unsettling thoughts belong to the areas where you are lagging, and the relaxing, soothing ones belong to the areas which you excel in.
As you develop this habit of watching and compartmentalizing your thoughts, you will also realize that you can safeguard the good parts of your life and work on improving the not-so-good bits- isn’t that fantastic? And this is only the beginning of mind control! There’s more coming up soon!