Mastering Your Thoughts

For the most part, mastering your mind is learning to let the negative thoughts run their course without believing them. You are going to have negative thoughts, everyone does, it is how the brain is built. The skill is not becoming attached to them, not letting them win, and not treating every one as true. You look at the thought, and you let it pass.

There is a version of you that thinks, and a higher version of you that can watch the thinking. Most people sit inside their thoughts and let the storm overtake them, believing every word. The shift is to rise above and observe them from a third person view, like a calm witness watching cars pass on the freeway. From up there, a thought is just a thought, not an order and not the truth.

This is exactly why the self worth foundation matters so much. When your worth is solid, you can use discernment, you can tell what is true and what is just noise. You do not have to battle the negative thoughts or try to think your way out of them. You simply hold the thought up against what you know to be true, and if it does not match, you let it go. A bad thought is just a bad thought. It is not a true thought.

The spirals will still come, the negative thought that tries to drag a negative feeling in right behind it. What we train is the gap: the time between catching the thought and coming back to center. The faster you catch it and compare it to what you know is true, the less power it has, and the sooner you are back, before the low feeling gets to take over.

You can also use a thought as information instead of an order. When a heavy one lands, get curious: what is the root of this? Usually it is fear, of failing, of not being good enough, of what people will think. Name the root, work through it, and replace the thought with a truer one. I am going to embarrass myself becomes, once you find the fear underneath, I can do this, and I am allowed to be a work in progress.