Change Your Life: Cleanse Your (Stubborn!) Mind

Make a new beginning with a new perspective

I still can’t believe she said that to me again!

Here we go…another miserable day at work.

I am so pissed off. Can you believe he did that to me!?

I just know this opportunity is going to fall through – yet again. Sigh…

Why does this kind of stuff always happen to me?

Why is life so hard?

Contrary to how it often seems, the vast majority of our life experience is not what happens around us. But rather, the thoughts and feelings we have in response to what we experience. An event can last for 30 seconds. Our ongoing reaction to it usually lasts many, many times longer. Someone’s quick retort that hurts our feelings can last 15 seconds. Our holding on to it – repeating it in our mind, amplifying it to friends, analyzing it lying awake in bed – can last days, or even decades. And color our entire lives.

In addition to cleaning out our bodies with a cleanse, spring and autumn are great times of year to clean out our thoughts. What old, heavy, and negative thoughts are holding you back? It’s easy to answer a quick, “No – that’s not me; I don’t do that.”
But are you sure?
Think about it for a moment.

Most of us spend a lot of our time ruminating about what we don’t want…what makes us angry, why we’re afraid, what we’re worried will happen, what frustrates us, why we doubt ourselves. Mentally and emotionally, we get overwhelmed with these details. We end up talking about them to whoever will listen. These thoughts fill our minds while we drive our cars or go about our daily routine. They also keep our body in a chronic, low-level state of fight-or-flight. This mode pushes our adrenal glands to constantly secrete stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Over time, this stress leads to weight gain, inflammation, and many chronic diseases. This isn’t speculation; it’s been proven in medical studies.

When someone asks, “How are you?”, how do you respond? Do you take the opportunity to celebrate what is going well – what makes you feel good? Or do you feel the need to run through your current list of problems and worries and frustrations? Without a conscious intention otherwise, our ego springs at the chance to be righteously upset. To justify our feeling bad. The problem is that all this emphasis makes these undesirable thoughts heavier, more burdensome, and magnetic in our minds. Is this really the life you want to choose?

What would it be like to just let your negative thoughts go? Just release them. It’s not about ignoring the facts in front of you. Be truthful with yourself. Acknowledge what you don’t like. Feel your feelings. But then just let the thought go. Instead, focus on doing what you need to do to move toward your goals. Speed bumps? Delays? Twists? These are just opportunities to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to what we want. Navigate as you need to. But let the thoughts about it go. Let the stories go. Let the unexpected or “negative” events play as small a role in your life as they can. Otherwise negative thoughts usually attract more of what you don’t want.

This season, develop the habit of choosing to think about what you DO want and to let it fill your thoughts. No matter what is happening in front of you, choose to focus on what makes you feel good. It takes practice. But I have seen it completely revolutionize lives. Including mine. The vast majority of our life experience is NOT what happens around us. It’s the thoughts and feelings we have in response to those events. You can choose joy.

Sometimes a good laugh shakes us out of our stuck place, so we can refocus on what we want to attract in life. In that vein, I am happy to share this really comical blog post. Don’t miss it. Most jokes are funny because of how oh-so-close-to-the-truth they are.   Enjoy!