The Power of Thoughts…

So far, we have discussed the art of auto-suggestion and how it can impact our lives. Before we go any further into understanding and learning about many such methods, I would like to talk about how our minds work, how our thoughts control our feelings and actions.

This was during my third month after I quit my job. Things were going slower than expected. I was struggling to concentrate on the tasks at hand and instead ended up procrastinating all through the day. I tried setting myself a timetable, waking up early in the morning, exercising for at least 2 hours and what not. But somehow, none of it seemed to be putting my mind at ease, clearing my head so that I could focus more. It was during one of these days that I stumbled onto the book, ‘The Secret’. In one of its chapters, they explained how what we think affected how we felt and hence, what we ended up doing during the day. They also made me aware of the subtle mistakes that I was making, like sometimes how we end up letting our emotions guide us with our tasks and not going by the timetable. As I kept reading further, I realized how to control my own mind and thoughts. I have summarized the steps below for your understanding:

Be aware of your emotions, how you feel. Your emotions are a direct consequence of your thoughts. How you are feeling is triggered by what you think.
You must understand your emotions and separate the positive emotions from the negative ones. For example, feeling loved, laughing, smiling, caring for someone, all are positive emotions, whereas feeling angry, possessive, jealous, lazy, distant are all negative emotions.
Once you are aware of your emotions, you must immediately become aware of the kind of thoughts that are running in your head. Each and every thought matters, just like every emotion that we feel.
Now that you know the kind of thoughts that are affecting your mood, it is time to change them. You must deliberately think of something good in order to replace the negative thoughts.
When you replace the negative thoughts with positive ones, you will immediately feel the difference through your emotions as well as your actions.

When I read it, I thought how difficult might it be? To be aware of your emotions, your thoughts and then to change them sounded easy. But when I initially started using this method, I faced a lot of setbacks. Going back to those old thoughts and hence being unable to get rid of them, not being aware of your emotions for a very long time, or sometimes never, were some of them. So, I decided to keep a check on my thoughts and emotions every now and then. I decided on a time period for myself, so that I would go back to my thoughts and my emotions after every interval. So, slowly and slowly, I started to become aware of my emotions. And once my mind started being aware, I was able to change my thoughts and hence my mood. At times, if I were deeply involved in some thought, I used to get signs from outside as well that helped me with the same. For example, if I were in the kitchen working, and I would feel sad or lost, the cooker would whistle snapping me out of my thoughts and hence keeping me aware of my feelings.

I never really thought I would need such methods to train my mind into behaving in a certain way, to make the best use of the day at hand but I did and I do! And this is just the beginning of a long journey that we have to take in order to fill our minds with positive thoughts and use them for the betterment of our lives. I hope you try this out and experience the change on your own.