Bold Departure from Habitual Thinking Patterns
Updated: Jul 14, 2018
Do you always know what thoughts you are thinking during the day? Which direction of thinking you are heading toward? Positive or negative? Are you aware of what emotions you are in? Low vibes or high vibes? Do you often manage your thinking and take care of your emotions?
Not until few years ago when I learned meditation that I started to aware what state of mind and vibes I am in during the day. It was "horrible" to realize how negative and low vibes I was when I first noticed what I was thinking about. I had so many negative thoughts about myself, other people, and almost all circumstances in my daily life. At the beginning, I was really scared by realizing this, especially how bad I treated myself by telling myself "I am damaged" "I am fat and unattractive" "I scared people around me", etc. When something I would love to do, I might have many doubts and might tell myself "I can't" or "I am not able to" followed by tons of excuses. So you can imagine what emotions I had and what vibes I was in during those years. Every Monday when I woke up I thought of "Monday Blue" and immediately felt "blue" carrying low energy to work.
After regular practice of meditation and self-observation for certain period of time, my awareness started to increase to a great extent. I realized my thinking patterns and was determined to transform them into healthy and positive ones, and gradually my world was changed and my quality of life has improved a lot, now I feel more peaceful and happy, and I have a choice of how to respond in any circumstances.
If you want your world to change, you must determine to practice self-observation - to uncritically observe your automatic reaction to your daily events and be brutally honest to yourself - then you will discover your habitual thinking patterns and where you stand psychologically; your inner world affects immensely your outer world. When you notice and realize this, you will be bold enough to have a "Departure" from these habitual patterns which do not serve you any longer. Yes I call it "bold", as very often we want to stay in our comfort zone and remain unchanged even though somehow we know deep in our heart we need to face it, and most of the time we aren't even dare to admit it. Do you feel how reluctant you are to let go what you have been thinking is no longer working for you?
"Watch your reactions to life, for any change in the arrangement of your mind that can be detected by self-observation will cause a change in your outer world." -- Neville Goddard
Here are 5 ways as a start to practice self-observation:
1. Set an INTENTION that you now will practice self-observation - It is important to set an intention before you start, without intention, you do not know what you want and what direction you are heading toward.
2. Meditation - Meditation is a very useful tool. Search for a good meditation centre near your area and take a meditation course to learn it properly. Usually there is a wrong belief that "Meditation is thinking of nothing", and many people comment themselves "I can't meditate, because I have so many thoughts that I can't sit quietly", I encourage you to take a course and find out is it true or not. I will also share more about meditation in future blog posts.
3. Set alarms - In your mobile phone, set several alarms during the day, to ask yourself "what am I thinking right now, this moment?" "what emotions do I have right now?" "what is my state of mind now?". This is a way to take care of your inner world and you will discover whole lots about yourself.
4. Watch your reaction to daily events - always be vigilant to notice how you react to different circumstances and people in your daily life. When you practice for a certain period of time, you may find a little space of time before you react to your event, which allows you to choose how you would really want to respond, replacing your automatic reaction. Start to notice any changes in your world after certain period of practicing self-observation.
5. Write a journal - it is important to record your progress, and it is so much fun to read your journal after a period of time, how much you have transformed and what further adjustments you need to make. Your journal becomes an encouragement and reward for you to continue the journey.
After a while, you will find that your "Bold Departure" is worthwhile, nourishing, joyful, fun and in high vibes.
