How to Use Your Thoughts to Shift Your Energy and Achieve Your Goals
“To swallow and follow,
whether old doctrine or new propaganda,
is a weakness still dominating the human mind.”
~Charlotte Perkins Gilman~
Thoughts are among your most powerful tools. Use them wisely and enjoy a life of meaning. Use them poorly and be consumed by the lowest common denominator of the epoch.
Your thoughts and beliefs are up to you to choose. Your mind may be dominated by destructive beliefs that no longer serve you (or humanity). Alternatively, you can purposely choose beneficial thoughts and beliefs.
Your mind can be a beautiful, pristine, and focused place. Or, it can be scattered, distracted, and subject to the whims of the moment. It all comes down to how you navigate thoughts.
Thoughts are kind of like phone calls – some should be heeded, others should be lovingly ignored. And, they should only be answered when it is a good time for you to take that call.
Have you ever seen how some people act like their phone buzzing is an emergency? Whatever they are doing, they hurriedly rummage around for that phone, as if God/dess were calling. The task at hand is disregarded as the sound of the ringtone grips them and they MUST answer. The sense of urgency overwhelms them and all they can think about is THE PHONE.
Not me. I prioritize. I do not allow the phone to dictate my life (or any technology for that matter).
In the same way that we tend to be used by our technology instead of using it to our purposes, we often allow our thoughts to use (and abuse) us instead of using the mind as a vehicle of beauty, focus, and achievement.
Here, we’ll delve more deeply into the energy of thoughts and how you can decipher which ones to ‘pick up’ and which ones to ‘ignore.’
Some of us are better than others at holding boundaries around communication from others. Likewise, some of us are skilled in filtering what we allow to occupy space in our minds and what is ‘banished.’ The good news…. it is a skill you can acquire. In fact, my mind is much improved since I began on the course of ‘beautifying’ many years ago.
Why do thoughts matter?
Thoughts become reality. (See the blog about this for a review.) So, be discriminating in what types of thoughts you allow to inhabit your precious mindspace.
Whatever you are holding in your mind will be created in form. Thoughts morph into substance.
If you hold a vision of yourself as flawed and victimized, you will be. And, you will continue to experience more of these situations as long as you see yourself that way. If you see yourself as healthy and happy, you will become so.
If you are skeptical about this idea, read the book “It’s the Thought That Counts” by David Hamilton, where you can read numerous scientific studies of how true this really is.
Also, the need to create a more serene mind is apparent in our cultural obsession with distraction/entertainment. For example, if you go for a run or a walk, do you insist on listening to music or can you just run and be comfortable in your mind? We are accustomed to having outside sources give the mind something to do other than think original thoughts. Hence the music playing in almost every store you visit and television screens on the back of every airplane seat.
Original, creative thought is what you need in order to create your best life and a better world. So, let’s get to it!
Follow these steps to create a majestic mind.
1) Focus
A wise woman (Kim Evazians) once told me to FOCUS:
Follow
One
Course
Until
Successful.
And, this is true when it comes to our thoughts. You have to simply keep on returning your attention on the one type of thought you want or the task at hand (depending on what you’re doing).
If you allow any thought that floats in to dominate your mind, over time your mindscape will become full of snares ready to deter you from your mission and higher purpose in life.
This means you must ignore, ignore, ignore those pesky critical voices. We are social animals, so our mind is designed to self-criticize to keep us socially acceptable. But, for most of us, this function is on overdrive. So, focus on the yummy thoughts.. the ones that feel good and are beneficial to yourself and your world… and lovingly let the other ones drift away.
Doubt, fear, lack, limitation, inferiority complexes – do not engage with them.
Just keep your focus on what you want.
2) Mind Exercises
There are specific exercises you can do to turn your mind into a happy, peaceful, powerful place.
One of my favorite exercises I have all of my private clients do is the I Love You exercise (I learned this from Louise Hay). You look in the mirror and say I Love You to yourself, in a deep and heartfelt way. Peer into your eyes as if you could speak directly into the core of your being. If you do this exercise on a regular basis you will shift your entire energetic frequency. Note: for many people trying this for the first time, they are uncomfortable doing this. You may feel silly. Just persist and do it every day until you can say it with aplomb!
Meditation is the ultimate training ground for the mind. There are many forms of meditation. Mantra meditation is most effective in cultivating mastery over your thoughts. As you meditate, thoughts come in and you consciously keep returning to your mantra.
By doing so, you train yourself to think the thoughts you want to think and hold a firm boundary around destructive thoughts. Of course, in meditation, it is a gentle process – there is no aggressive or defensive force to holding this boundary. But, over time, you create a force field that is incredibly strong and thoughts that are not in resonance with the serene mindscape you’ve created will not even be able to enter your consciousness… because you’ve shifted the energy of your mind.
- Practice Pratipaksha Bhavanam in Your Daily Life
After doing the exercises above on a regular basis, you’ll want to bring self-inquiry into your daily life.
Pratipaksha Bhavanam is a nugget of wisdom from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Put simply, it means “Think The Opposite.”
If you’re working on a project, for example, and someone criticizes it, you now have an opportunity to use what you’ve learned. You listen to what the person has to say conscientiously and openly. Then, you come to your own conclusions based on what they shared. If you’re struggling to find peace about the exchange, you know you have some mind cleaning to do.
For some of us, any type of criticism leaves a cloud of doom in our bodies all day long. But, the antidote to this is to ask yourself what idea, specifically, is upsetting you. Get to the root issue and find out if it is really true. Perhaps in the example above, you were taking the criticism of your project as a personal criticism.
- Identify what the underlying belief is that the person triggered.
- Come up with its opposite and continue to affirm it to yourself.
For example, with the criticized project
- I am not good enough. I am not as talented as everyone else at my firm. (underlying beliefs which the person triggered in you)
- I am amazing. I am creative, talented, and astoundingly brilliant!
This may sound “Polyanna-ish”, but I dare you to try this the next time you’re feeling down. Get to the root of it. Think the opposite and reap the reward.
***Also, as a side note, I’ll be speaking about Charlotte Perkins Gilman (the author of the quote at the beginning of this blog) at the Minding Animals Conference in India this January. In case this piques your interest, click here.**