According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts. If we repeat those negative thoughts, we think negative way more than we think positive thoughts. No wonder depression is so prevalent in today’s society. We are thinking ourselves into despair.
Consider the frame of mind you could potentially be putting yourself in if you are anywhere near fulfilling these statistics. Are you unconsciously and systematically thinking yourself into a sinking despair creating anxiety, fear and depression? Or are you using these 60,000 potential opportunities to build yourself up and enhance our life? Every day you could be capitalizing on 20,000 – 60,000 opportunities to supercharge your life with inspiration, kindness and self encouragement. It’s right there in your own mind.
I’m going to focus most of my attention here on slowing down the rate of our thoughts to cut down on the opportunity we have to pull ourselves down into despair with the 9,600 – 48,000 negative thoughts that could currently be running through or minds…every day. We’ll also spend a little time reframing these thoughts so you can replace them with positive ones that are more than likely closer to the truth of your actual reality.
If you have been following Inner Peace Today you understand that I endorse both meditation and mindfulness practice as effective tools for calming our minds and bringing our minds more in alignment with our peaceful center. For the first exercise I’m going to roll with meditation because it allows us to consciously identify thoughts as they arise and release them.
In this exercise you will start by closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing. Do this for about 1 – minute. Shortly after you begin to focus on your breathing you’ll notice that thoughts will begin to come into your mind distracting your focus.
As soon as you notice a thought, recognize it consciously envision this thought like its like a big white puffy cloud in the sky. Mentally say to this thought, not now, and watch it drift across your mind’s eye. Again, focus on your breathing and await the next thought. Repeat the process of recognizing thoughts when they arise and releasing them, watching them float from left to right like big puffy white clouds. Practice this exercise until you have a firm grasp of recognizing thoughts when they come up and releasing them.
Finally, take this a step further by recognizing the space or emptiness in your mind between the thoughts that arise. You can even count the seconds until the next thought comes up. For many of us this time is only milliseconds, but don’t get discouraged. After practice the length of time (peace) between thoughts will grow longer and longer.
The important part of this exercise is not necessarily creating longer gap in time between thoughts although that is a worthy goal. It is simply developing the skill of recognizing within your own mind when thoughts do enter into your consciousness. Just doing this gives you a big jump in taming the incessant thinking that normally goes on within us. The first step to taming or minds and the negative and potentially destructive thoughts that are so prevalent within us is to first learn to recognize them when they arise so that we can release them.
Go ahead and do this exercise now.
The next exercise has more to do with addressing the negative or destructive thoughts and reframing them so that they become are allies. For this you will need a pen and a piece of paper or if you feel more comfortable on your laptop or word processor on your phone you can use them as well. This time go into your breathing exercise. As you focus on your breathing once again you will begin to recognize thoughts enter your mind.
This time as you recognize any neutral or positive thoughts release them as before like puffy white clouds drift across your consciousness. When you reach a negative thought. You’ll recognize the negative thoughts by the accompanying negative emotion they invoke when you continue dwelling on the thought.
Anything that causes you to feel anxiety, self-doubt, anger, sadness or regret would qualify as negative. Stop and write it down. Write whatever thought arises on the left side of the page under the heading “Thought.” After you’ve completed your list go thought by thought and ask yourself, “Is this thought really true?” In many cases you’ll find that the answer is an emphatic no. This in itself will get you moving your mindset in a more accepting and peaceful direction.
For instance you might think to yourself;
“I hate myself for messing up that job interview.”
“If I don’t finish this report I’m a failure.”
“I’ll never get ahead because I didn’t get that promotion.”
“How could my friend stand me up she is such a jerk?”
Draw a line down the center of the page and on the right heading write, “Ways that this could possibly help me” Now you know what to do next. On the right side of every negative thought that you encounter write as many positive outcomes as you can. For instance for “messing up the job interview” you could write, “There is a better job waiting for me that better utilizes my talents, I am over qualified for that job and would have gotten bored in short order if I got that job, This gives me the opportunity to start the business that I’ve been dreaming about, Now I can start writing that book.” You get the idea
So, you have now identified the negative thought. In many cases you have identified that this negative thought that is causing you concern isn’t not even true and you have replaced this negative thought with multiple reasons that the event that caused the thought actually works in your favor. This will help you to release your minds attachment to these negative disturbing thoughts because you have taken their power away.
You are now ready to resume your productive day. To strengthen your minds capacity to identify the level of truth (untruth) of your negative thoughts and create more positive, uplifting and inspirational thoughts that are actually a part of your present reality do this exercise for 10 – 30 minutes, 4 – 7 days per week. If possible do them every day. You will find that your natural level of inner peace, bliss, self-awareness and self-confidence will increase exponentially over time.
