I am feeling so enlightened right now. I have been buzzing ever since the Way connected with me last month and confirmed to me, yet again, that we are all one. There is so much in that knowledge to feel great about every day. (I will be writing about this soon)
This "buzzing" led me to read "10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head" this morning. It's a spiritual book written by Dan Harris.
The thing I liked was that it was repeating what I have come to learn, and what Taoists and Buddhists have come to learn for thousands of years.
For you to feel content you must learn to understand and control your thinking process.
However, I am not actually writing this blog post to tell you about that book. I am writing it to tell you about my rating technique which can give you power over your thoughts.
The first thing is to maintain your awareness that you are not your thoughts.
Once you can maintain awareness you can choose whether your thinking should be rated as being a HAPPY FACE 😊 or a SAD FACE 😥.
Let's run through a scenario to put this rating method through its paces and show it works.
Scenario:
You are sitting on the sofa watching a movie. You suddenly are aware that you have not been following the movie and have been thinking and still are thinking about a negative comment someone made to you yesterday.
In this scenario, you should mentally (or physically) say "Rate it!". It may seem silly but doing this is important to consciously get your mind to pay attention.
Once your mind is paying attention, you should rate how thinking about that negative comment is making you feel. Does it make you feel HAPPY 😊 or SAD 😥?
If it makes you feel sad then you should instantly stop thinking about it. You can do this just by being consciously aware that there is no benefit in you thinking that way, it is not improving anything.
If the thoughts are persistent you can also either do something that will make you switch into a different mental state of mind, such as jump up, go over to a mirror and start grinning at yourself until you laugh - or - you can learn to "flip" the negative perspective you have on what was said; turn it into a positive perspective; such as saying to yourself, "I am glad that negative comment was said because the person saying it was obviously dealing with a pain I cannot see and therefore I have helped them release some inner tension, the next time I see them I will ask if everything is okay and I am there for them if they need me".
Can you see how the HAPPY and SAD emoji ratings will help you manage your thoughts? In time your mental muscles will habitually be able to stop negativity from influencing your state of mind. In time you may also learn to regularly stop thinking altogether and enjoy the connected oneness which you are and always will be (that's another story for another time).
I realise that the rating technique I have described is just one way. You could use a thumbs up or thumbs down if you prefer. Use whatever works for you.
Any questions let me know in the comments.
Kindly,
Christian Jacques Bennett
