The mind loves to dwell. It will dwell on any experience. The longer the mind fixates on an experience, whether perceived as good or bad, the more opportunities come for the mind to distort the reality and create stories around the memory. These stories if negative, create pain and mental and emotional suffering.
How can we keep the mind from dwelling or fixating on an experience? We have to keep it moving forward and focused on what is happening in this moment. When we are always focused on this moment, the mind has little time to stop, fixate, create, distort, and suffer. Ask yourself, what is happening right now. What in this moment is happening that is painful. It is possible that a moment could bring physical, mental, or emotional pain, but is it continuous? If you are flowing with the moment, doesn't whatever is upsetting you, stop at some point. If someone were yelling at you, during the moment they were yelling, you would feel some emotions arising. When they stop yelling, and leave the room, the initial adrenaline and shock of being yelled at begins to fade. The upsetting stimulus has ended. So what keeps us upset for hours afterwards? What keeps us upset, is the mind dwelling and fixating on the event, creating stories, making assumptions about how the other person must think and feel about us. We can learn to refocus the mind after an upsetting event, preventing it from dwelling. How? In the same way we would calm an upset or hurting child, by shifting their focus on something more pleasant, more fun. Moving them forward to a more enjoyable experience. We naturally know how to do this for others. Now it's time we learn how to do this for our own selves. A.J.
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What is your current relationship with life? Are you in love with life, trusting it fully to take you to the most beautiful experience? Or do you perceive life as something to be survived, suspecting the worst, moving from one disaster to the next? If you are experiencing the latter, it's time to heal your relationship with life. This begins by starting to trust that life is here to support you in every way, to show you beautiful things, to give you the space to create, and ...enjoy, and to love. To see and recognize all that life has given you, and all the ways it has supported you, with give you the attitude of gratitude. Holding and attitude of trust and gratitude can heal any relationship, not just your relationship with life. You are not in this life to suffer, to experience emotional highs and lows. However, this will sadly be the case until we decide that life is on our side, not here to hurt us, but rather here to give us an opportunity to experience better and better. Life loves you. Trust it. Love it back. Relax into it. Let go of needing to control it. Stop needing and wanting things from it . Say thank you, and see what happens. A.J. Want to kick a habit or stop a behavior? Our daily habits are shaped by the mental voice we listen too. If we listen to the voice of the ego mind consistently, our behaviors and habits will reflect this. When we are listening to the quieter voice of our higher mind, we take on habits that are supportive, healthy, and keep us moving forward in a positive direction. So if you are unsure which mind you are taking instructions and directions from, check out your behaviors and habits. If it's a behavior you would like to change, become aware of the mental dialog that pushes you to behave in that way. What does the mind say? What excuses does it use? What threats does it use? Write these down so you can be prepared for what it will use against you once you decide to change. Then have some of your own statements prepared to tell the mind when it tries to talk you out of doing something different. Write a few powerful "why" statements. Once written out, you may notice the excuses the mind uses, don't make much sense, or are illogical, because the ego mind is illogical. All it takes is awareness and determination to focus and think on things that create habits that support you, instead of ones that serve to destroy you. The mind will tell you it's too hard to change. Don't listen to that one either. A.J. |
AuthorAngie Johnsey is a speaker, author and world-renowned Mind expert. A hypnotherapist and psychiatric nurse by trade, Angie assists clients all over the world to become aware of their mental and emotional patterns, bring clarity and peace to lives that were once full of stress and suffering, and choose the feelings they would like to have to transform their lives. Archives
May 2023
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