Thoughts are so common (60,000+ every single day) that most people it seems, don’t really notice them. They just zip in and out, in and out, in and out…incessantly. So what?
Well, our thoughts are accompanied by feelings, and these thoughts and feelings guide our actions, and our actions produce the results of our life. What human being do you know who is 100% pleased with the results in their life? How about you?
The really good news is that you have more say in the matter than you might have known. For many, the constant stream of thoughts and jolts of noticeable feelings is just the way it is. In fact, one’s thoughts and feelings can appear to be what life is all about. But who owns the thoughts and feelings? You do! They are distinctly inside of you and nobody else has your unique combination of them.
So how to use this information? Well, in order to change thoughts and feelings to work better on your behalf to produce more favorable life results, you first have to notice them. Thankfully we are blessed with a brain that has a pre-frontal lobe that is the center of self-awareness.
Try this little experiment: take just a few seconds to direct your brain to produce thoughts on a specific topic; let’s say colorful, wonderfully scented flowers in a lovely garden. Now, take notice of what your brain produces in thoughts, feelings, images, smells, and even body sensations. Good noticing! Now, ask your brain to shift its activity and imagine being in a warm kitchen on a chilly day where delicious fresh made-from-scratch chocolate chip cookies have just come out of the oven. What thoughts, feelings, images, smells and even body sensations arise now? Quite different I imagine. Now bring in some contrast and imagine being at an oily, smelly gas station. Or in an outhouse. Or…(make it up).
Do you notice how the higher you can actually shift your thoughts… at will. Powerful information that. At first, all this noticing and intentionally shifting can feel like a lot of work with lots of failure. But you know that the more you practice anything well and regularly, you usually get better at it. This is true for becoming more purposefully self-directing too.
Let’s go one more place with this. It is kind of obvious that positive inner thoughts and feelings are more likely to produce better outcomes than negative ones for you. So wouldn’t it be helpful to become more aware of the negative voices and shift them to positive ones?
Again there is good news. Let’s take one form of negative voice, the one that is self-judging. I’m not talking about analytically evaluating how you are doing. We’re talking about the kind of judgmental voice that says things about yourself like: "What a jerk!" "How dumb was that!" "I’ll never get that right!" Not very helpful are they. But the good news is this. When thoughts (and attendant low feelings) like this realize they are being observed (instead of just running their gerbil wheel of criticism), they actually disappear (at least for some moments – if they’ve been speaking for years, they will likely come back). But if you are ready for them with your self-focused awareness, they will eventually fade and finally disappear. Hard work but well worth your peace of mind. And peace of mind helps build your resilience.
A rather fun way of getting the hang of this Is something Dr. Daniel J. Siegel presents in his book "Mindsight". As you practice this self-awareness, imagine your negative thought/negative feeling to be a boat floating on your mental sea. Blow the boat any way you want. Have fun imagining the boat going up and down the waves Waves you want it to. And then, notice that while you are playing with the boat, that your negative thought/feeling has disappeared. If it returns, just notice that. Turn it into a floating boat again. Or have it be an elephant on a vast plain. Or perhaps you morph the negative thought/feeling into a bird soaring high above an interesting landscape. The more creative you are, and the more you enjoy your own creativity, the more likely that you will return to the practice again and again, slowly but surely reducing the negative voice(s) and calming your mental sea. This peace will allow you to more intentionally create the life that you choose. And that is one highly resilient life!
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