Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Observing Your Thoughts

Have you ever taken the time to truly observe your thoughts?
You have thousands a day. Many are trivial. Many are ridicules. Some are emotionally charged and can hijack your attention for hours. A few may be sublime.
Have you ever gone through the exercise of simply choosing not to engage or entertain any of the thoughts that are auditioning for your attention?  If not, I encourage you to try it sometime.  Simply sit down in some quiet place and remove your attention from any thought that presents itself to your awareness.
Some thoughts will be easy to ignore. Others will keep coming back.  However if you keep letting them go, keep shifting your attention to anything else  - your breath, an inner feeling of affection, simply experiencing the nuances of a current sense perception; sight, sound, feeling, etc. – what do you notice?  After even 10 minutes of such an exercise, what do you feel?
As Pascal once said, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 
If you spend even 10 minutes a day with the intention of thinking less, and experiencing more, it can bring great gifts into your life.  (I have seen this very experiment create a lot of value to hundreds of life and business coaching clients over the years.)  Gradually you can begin to use the mind for practical issues, but not refer to it constantly for a sense of identity.

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