Path to peace

I read somewhere that our brains process about 70,000 thoughts a day. That’s quite shocking when you think about it (no pun intended!) but actually it seems about right.

I don’t know about you, but my brain is a busy highway. Thoughts, ideas, nonsense and gibberish fly through like speeding cars. In all honesty it’s hard to keep up!

But how much of that traffic of thoughts or stream of consciousness do you accept or believe?

This can be a real problem for so many people (including me). We treat that little voice in our head as an authority figure; an oracle that knows all. And we believe it, even when it’s spouting rubbish.

Perhaps you’re having a conversation with a friend and afterwards thoughts flash through your mind like: “huh, why did you say that to her, you idiot?”, or “she’s so clever, I wish I was intelligent like her, but I never will be”.

Rather than dismissing these thoughts as a stream of garbage, how many of you would accept and believe them? Letting that negative inner critic win and take a swing at our self esteem and confidence.

Conversely, how many of you would immediately dismiss it as absolute rubbish and carry on with the day in a better frame of mind? I think I’d have to put my hand up for the first one most of the time. But I am trying to catch the trash and eject it before it runs way with itself.

“It’s important what thoughts you are feeding into your mind because your thoughts create your belief and experiences. You have positive thoughts and you have negative ones too. Nurture your mind with positive thoughts: kindness, empathy, compassion, peace, love, joy, humility, generosity, etc. The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life”

Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

Perhaps it helps to think of thoughts like a waterfall. Those 70,000 thoughts or water droplets will fly by regardless of what you do. It’s not possible to stop them. But we can choose how wet we get and whether to listen to them.

It can be tempting to identify with those thoughts and believe they are part of who we are. But they are not the essence or heart of you. Or indeed your true self.

Take a step back and watch the water flow past. As Louise Hay remarks, “with our thoughts we can drown in a sea of negativity, or we can float on the ocean of life”.

Sigmund Freud said “where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?”. Let’s put those negative ones in the trash can and pay them no attention.