Controlling Your Mind
Day 13 – 352 days to go!
Controlling undisciplined thoughts
Our minds are a very important component of the way we experience life. A successful life or a unhappy and bitter life are created in the mind. What we think, how we think, what we focus on, how we perceive things, how we project our perceptions onto situation all influence how we will experience the situation. True or not true? Have you ever experienced two people in the same environment – say work – the one loves it, loves the people finding them friendly and helpful and puts their whole heart into the interesting project. While the other is miserable and unhappy finding the work dull and boring and the people unhelpful. Same company, same department, same environment but two completely different experiences.
I have come to the belief that my experience of the external environment is the result of my internal environment. In particular my thoughts have a big impact on what I experience, what I believe I can achieve, how I behave and how I react.
7 Day Challenge Result
Last Thursday I put down the challenge to check in with my thoughts every hour and set my intention to be positive. Here is the result of that challenge
The first day I found it really difficult to even remember to stop and think about what I was thinking. So I set a clock to beep every hour to remind me to stop. The effect of that beeping clock has produced two responses in me – annoyance at the interruption it is causing which has resulted in ignoring the beep and continuing with what I was doing. The second effect is to drag me from what I was doing, remind me of my challenge and for a minute to stop, think, breathe and relax.
The days that I consistently stopped every hour had a very positive outcome. I seemed to be able to handle stressful situations much easier without becoming flustered. I felt friendlier and dealing with those little time consuming queries that came in was a lot easier. On the days that I didn’t I would get flustered, agitated and feel stressed – wishing I could run away and be left alone.
I have decided to continue the experiment. Except I am going to modify it a bit. My clock is still going to beep every hour to remind me to stop and relax. But instead of taking five minutes every hour which can be impractical I want to experiment with stopping, breathing and monitoring my thoughts three times a day – morning, lunch time and evening.
What was your experience of doing this? Let me know.
