No doubt, the mind is fascinating. Most of the time we do not pay very close attention to our thoughts. However, studies show we have something like 40,000 – 60,000 thoughts a day. Numbers will vary according to the information or study you are reading. However, even if we cut those numbers in half, it is still an incredible amount of thinking we are doing! And if we drill that down, its something like 38 -40 thoughts per minute.
What is even more fascinating is that those are the same thoughts, we had yesterday, and the week before, and the month before…….So, is all that thinking and all those thoughts helping or, could they be stressing us?
Okay, so lets look at this a little closer. We have one mind, but 2 parts. The left brain, or what we will call the “thinking mind” is the part of us that is rational, judgmental, analytical, and critical. The part of you that gets you to work on time, buys groceries, balances your checkbook, works out. This is your conscious mind and this is the part of the mind that most everyone believes is in charge. Now, enter the right brain, or the “feeling mind”, this is the one associated with your subconscious mind. This is where you habits live, your imagination, beliefs, creativity, feelings, emotions, daydreaming, intuition…I could keep going, but I think you are getting the message. The MASTER of you is the subconscious mind. It is taking orders from the conscious mind. Now, here is another bit of interesting information about the thinking (conscious) mind and the feeling (subconscious) mind. The thinking mind does not FEEL and the feeling mind does not THINK. But they communicate. How? you might say. Through images, imagery, symbols, and pictures. So you see, the place where we create change, in fact, all change, including manifesting takes place in the “feeling” or subconscious mind.
One very important thing to note is that when your conscious mind and your subconscious mind are in agreement, there is no doubt you will be successful with the change you are wanting to bring into your life!
Now, back to all those thoughts. In today’s world we are over taxing our left brain, “thinking mind”. All the emails, phone calls, text messages, our technology driven world has driven us more to the left analytical brain. That brings on mental fatigue. Yes, it is likely that all that thinking is adding additional stress to our hectic busy technology driven lives!
So here is my suggestion. At least a couple of times a day, stop what you are doing. Close your eyes, connect with your breath. Take slow easy breaths. Listen to the sound of your breath, that means you will need to be in a quiet environment.
Next, imagine a calm place, a water fall, a green lush forest, a sandy beach, whatever your special quiet refuge might be. Mine is always a small stream of water that is flowing. The point is that you are disconnecting from the overwhelming number of thoughts that clutter the mind. You see the mind and the breath are intimately linked together. You can control your mind, using your breath. In Yoga, this is called pranayama or breath work. The Yogi’s knew and understood the secrets of using the breath to control the mind. In fact studies have been done to also understand how they could control their body temperature in freezing cold weather. Perhaps we could be happy just to use our breath to de-stress us from all those random and useless thoughts!