Think Yourself Happy

How often have you taken time out to reflect on just how incredible your mind is?

We humans have somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 thoughts per day, or around 40 thoughts every minute. That’s quite staggering isn’t it!

Each thought is really a little impulse of energy. With over 7bn people on the planet processing come 60,000 thoughts each day that adds up to an awful lot of ‘thought energy’! Just imagine if there was some way to harness and direct it. Talk about a sustainable energy source!

Thoughts are the source of all creation. Nothing comes into being without somebody thinking about it first. But, as we have learnt from the Law of Attraction, it requires consistent, focused thought in order to manifest what is being thought about.

Most of us take our minds – and the constant stream of seemingly random thoughts that they dish up – for granted as we go about the business of keeping our heads above water in our frenetic day to day lives.

But what if we could learn to harness the power of our minds and bring more focus and intention to our thoughts?

[box type=\”shadow\”]“Every thought we think is creating our future.”

– Louise Hay[/box]

 

Think yourself happy (continued)

 

Bringing thoughts under conscious control

Rene Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher who developed so-called Cartesian Logic, famously said: “I think, therefore I am,” concluding that man’s capacity to think proved his existence.

This ‘proof of existence’ went unchallenged for some three hundred years until another philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, suggested that there is a separation between thinking and the awareness that you are thinking, implying the need to correct Descartes’ statement to read: “I am aware of the fact that I think, therefore I am”.

This means that thinking takes place in a state of conscious awareness, or in other words, we have oversight of our thinking. In other words, thinking is not an involuntary process (although it can and does happen automatically) but something we can consciously control.

Thankfully for us, there is a time delay between thinking and manifestation of our thoughts. This allows us the opportunity to override our thoughts or change our minds about bringing something into our reality.

So, the vast majority of the pulses of energy that we emit through our thoughts are insufficiently strong to affect the material world around us. Nonetheless they do still affect the world. In particular, they affect what we believe and how we feel, and they influence the actions and behaviours we take on a day-to-day basis.

The cumulative result of all these thoughts is what gives us our personalities.

Thoughts as questions and answers

If you think about it carefully you will appreciate that the process of thinking is really a process of asking and answering questions. You may ‘think a statement’ but invariably there is either a question behind the statement or the statement is an answer to another question.

Imagine you have a question about something. Nowadays, the quick way to get an answer is to type your question into an Internet search engine. Within a split second your search engine will find and present every possible answer available in your browser in order of the most to the least relevant.

Similarly, when you think a question, quick as a flash your brain will retrieve all the answers available to it and present you with what it thinks is the most relevant for you.

So, if we are continually asking questions and seeking answers as part of the thinking process, it follows that if we are asking the wrong questions then – if this happens regularly – it is likely to contribute to disempowering beliefs and an overall negative effect on us.

Have you ever knocked a glass off the table in a restaurant and thought to yourself: “Oh my goodness, why am i such a clumsy idiot?”

When you ask yourself negative or disempowering questions, you are tasking your brain to find appropriate answers and examples. In the case of our example, perhaps something like: “Because you were born that way.” Such answers form the underpinnings of a limiting belief.

When you have limiting beliefs, they tend to focus your mind on what is wrong with you or with your life or with life in general. Then you start to ask more disempowering questions of yourself. And guess what? You get even more disempowering answers!

Can you see that this is the start of a very vicious cycle?

If we can get into the habit of asking ourselves positive, empowering questions, then our brains will constantly be finding the appropriate positive, empowering answers. These will lead to the establishment of empowering beliefs and the personal growth and development that comes from this.

Asking the right questions

Once you are consciously aware of your old habit of asking yourself disempowering questions you can start to build a new habit of asking more empowering questions in your thoughts. This is fundamental to bringing about a positive state of being and a much happier, more fulfilling and more constructive life.

Take our example of the accident in the restaurant. If your immediate thought was to ask a different question like “What can I learn from this little incident” your brain will find a very different answer, perhaps something like “When you’re out to dinner with your partner, give your full focus to your partner, the moment and everything around you.”

This more empowering form of reflection is likely to lead to greater self respect and more personal growth.

Hey presto! The vicious cycle has been replaced with a virtuous one.

With this simple shift in the way you question yourself you can literally think yourself happy!

 

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