5 Steps to Understanding Your Your Mind - The Affirmation Spot for Saturday July 25, 2008
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When you go to see a doctor he or she performs a number of routine tests. Typically, the doctor takes your temperature, takes your blood pressure, looks into your eyes, ears, nose, and throat, and listens to your heart and lungs.While not an extensive exam, these routine measures provide the doctor with a sense of your general health.What about your mind? Is there anyway to get a general measure of your mind's health? All the great sages in history have encouraged people to pay attention to their minds and their thoughts. They didn't live in the 21st century! Many people today are so busy that they fall into the habit of letting the mind go on autopilot.We take the inputs the world gives us - media, government, religion, others' opinions - but we often fail to critically evaluate how those ideas and information are impacting our thinking. And, as I have discussed previously, our thoughts are the filters that generate habits, beliefs, and actions.When they go unexamined for long periods of time we can drift a long way off our intended course. Like a plastic bottle bobbing on the ocean, we may suddenly awake to find ourselves far from shore.There are some really low-tech ways to get a handle on what your mind is doing. There is no hope for change or adjustment until there is awareness.Are you negative about what you can or cannot accomplish? Are you judgmental of others? Are you cynical? Do you want to find out?Try one of the following each day this coming work week.
- Monday - keep a little tick sheet handy and keep track of the number of times your mind tells you that you cannot do something. For an added degree of analysis, determine the reason you gave yourself for the negative belief. Track it all day long and see how many negative thoughts go through your head in a day.
- Tuesday - keep a little tick sheet and see how many times you judge others in a day. You might judge them for how they drive, how they look, how they talk, or the things they do. This is not an exercise to judge you for judging, but simply a way to recognize how often you do it.
- Wednesday - concentrate on the sources of information that are coming into your mind from radio, tv, other people, the Internet. Give some thought to how what you mentally consume each day is impacting your happiness. Keep a negative and positive tick sheet to capture the percentage of negative to positive data entering your mind.
- Thursday - Write down three goals you'd like achieve in the next year on a piece of paper. Lay your pen down and listen to the thoughts that come to your mind. Don't respond just listen. Are your immediate reactions to your goals and your ability to achieve them positive or negative. Right down your initial responses next to each goal.
- Friday - after four days of this, you need some positive. Today tick mark each positive thing, person, or experience you encounter. Don't forget to count opening your eyes for a new day as one. Go out of your way to "smell the flowers", if you have to. Become aware of how many good things there are around you every day.
At the end of the week, you will have a much better sense of what is going through your mind all day long every day. You will have "taken your mind's temperature" and evaluated its general health. You will definitely have awareness, but what will you do with it? Stay inspired!Ray