For Well-Being:5 Practical Steps to shift between thoughts

In a previous chat Expand Your Choices, we had explored the 2 faces of the thought seeds implanted in our minds. Before we apply these 5 steps for well-being, let we remember those 2 thought seeds. The ones that are enforced by fear from a scary future projection on our life. Those scary thoughts are fed by the collective consciousness in the media, social media, market trends and close circle fears of what’s next.

The other thought seeds are those questions implanting hope in our daily life. Why do I stay confined between “Shall I survive?” and “Shall I get sick or broke?”. What about “How can I add a few cheerful tweaks to my daily life?” and ” What will make me now ready for a better tomorrow?”

The first step, understand your thoughts better.

Actually any thought is a form of energy that has a survival mechanism. Its survival mechanism to remain alive and grow is to draw our attention to it. When our attention is withdrawn towards a thought it will grow and our mind will start feeding it with a stream of similar thoughts to grow and dominate our mind. Negative or fearful thoughts took the look of rationality due to the existence of ready-made logic and proof by the community. Attraction to negative thoughts or worst-case scenario is innate in our being, why? It alerts us to unsafe situations to take action and avoid them, why? By doing so the mind or ego had succeeded to save our body alive which is the vehicle they use to exist on earth

The second step, Understand where are we relative to our thoughts.

We are the awareness of our thoughts. If ever we stop for a moment to monitor our thoughts. Or, ask our selves, “What I was just thinking about?”. Or “Which thought brought this heavy feeling in my body??”

These simple questions liberate you from the autopilot life that you are dragged to. This who asks those liberating questions is the real you. Nice to meet him, give him a pat on the back and shake hands with him, he will not infect you with any sort of virus :). He is the champion that will rescue you. Before this point, the energy body of the fearful thoughts has kidnapped us and kept our awareness locked in a dark room without any window.

The third step, loosen the control over scary thoughts

It is not a fault or a mistake that we leave our selves in this trap without trying to escape. It is our controlling nature that believes that we need to tightly control everything in our life. And then we focus on that future projection of negative thought and continue to do so thinking that we shall prevent by thinking more about it. Here Eckhart Tolle explains that you cannot solve a future problem now. You can take physical actions when the problem occurs. I would like to add an idea from Abraham Hicks.

There is no assertion in life. It is only the attraction of what is similar to your current vibration (i.e. state of mind).

Abraham Hicks

The fourth step, break the stream of thoughts.

Why do we need to break the stream of fearful thoughts? Because it flushes away the subtle light sprouting from the right questions we ask ourselves. Moreover, we will be engaged in two activities at the same time escaping from fearful thoughts and focusing on supportive thoughts.

There are many ways to slow down our thought stream. This step is crucial even if you believe that your thoughts are on the right side supportive side. It frees you some energy that you can direct to new thoughts or activities. A clue on this is when you spend some time working with much focus just on your computer, you end up tired and hungry. Though you didn’t move an inch or move a muscle except those controlling your fingertips. But the stream of thoughts consumes our body energy to exist. Now you believe, don’t you?? 🙂

I will be sharing with you a technique from Ekhart Tolle that I found it most useful and brings quicker results.

• Close your eyes
• Take a few calm breaths
• Start to feel one part of your body
  • You can easily feel your hand by moving it
  • Draw your attention to your hand without moving it
  • Continue till you feel its existence
  • What you had sensed now is the energy that flows or exists in your hand
• Shift your attention now to another hand or leg
• Shift it to less commonly sensed organ as you eye
• Play by trying to feel the energy of 2 parts together
• Continue till you are satisfied
• Did any thought interrupt you? I believe not. Or at most a stray one.
• Come back to this practice whenever you want to escape from a thought stream. Try practicing it as you wake up. It will be a WOW moment.

The fifth step, Focus on what you want

That’s when we ask the right questions in a difficult time. I will give you some examples here.

When we are in the midst of an undesirable situation, some angry, anxious questions baked with fear dominates our mind as “When this will come to an end?”, “I can’t survive this situation.”, “What are the drawbacks of this neverending situation?” pop up to our mind.

Then, after we move through steps 1-4, we come up with new thought seeds:

• “What I can do to feel well now?”,
• “How can I immune myself from facing this fearful situation yet to come?”,
• “What I can do now that will make me ready for a brighter tomorrow?”

Another fearful situation is when we are close to an exam or a handover deadline. That a typical situation where we ask ourselves: “Will questions come from where I didn’t study?”, “What if I didn’t remember what I studied?”, “Will I wake up on time?”, “Can I succeed in my project?”, “Will everyone laugh about it?” and so on.

Now, After you had moved through the steps 1 to 4, shift your focus to:

• “How can I divide my time fairly between my tasks?”
• “How will I feel after the successful submission?”
• “What I will do to celebrate my satisfactory answers in the exam “
• “What will be my response to the admiration of my work?”
• “Where I can focus more to cover the necessary points?”