Eavesdropping on Your Mind…

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If you have ever attempted to meditate you know that the first step is to quiet your mind.  If you are anything like me you found that way harder than it sounds.  When I closed my eyes for the first time and began to relax, I saw the most strange and random images floating in my mind. To help myself focus I formed an image of a specific object like a sunflower and that seemed to help with the “visual noise”.    Once that was somewhat under control, I noticed something more disturbing.  I was hearing voices!  I suspected that I might actually be insane but, after asking around,  I found that others had encountered the same phenomenon.  It was the sound of old conversations, TV broadcasts, radio, the neighbors; anything that I had heard recently was rattling around in my head.  Even things I hadn’t  heard in years and years, such as the theme song from S.W.A.T. or my  grandmother singing me to sleep.  We all have these “voices” playing in the background of our minds, as a matter of fact advertisers have capitalized on that reality for decades.  The scary part to me was that I was not consciously aware that  this soundtrack was playing and more importantly I was not aware of what it was playing.  One day, after trying unsuccessfully to quiet the “voices” I decided to try the “if you can’t beat’em, join’em” approach and I sat back and just listened.  I began to eavesdrop on my mind.  What an amazing experience!

Little by little as the random noise of old conversations and commercials faded away, I would turn my mind towards a particular topic that I was working on such as weight loss. I would focus on my visualization while being open to eavesdropping on myself.  I heard some interesting and not very flattering statements in my mind.  I would be visualizing myself back to my ideal weight and focus on feeling the feelings of accomplishment and confidence and somewhere just on the periphery of my consicousness there was this small voice saying “yeah right” or “it will never happen”.   I was pretty surprised and not a little bit annoyed at myself.  I began to wonder how often this little voice was talking smack about me so I made it a point to keep an ear out for it throughout my day.

While riding in my car listening to the The Secret for the 500th time I was at a part about financial abundance and I was telling myself that I can have and do deserve abundance and there was that voice again in the distance saying “not for you”.  Here I am walking around thinking that I am Little MIss Positive Thinking when in reality I’m more Negative Nancy.  Could this be the reason that I am not achieving in certain areas of my life.  Do I still have limiting beliefs that I am hiding from myself?

Mind you this negative thinking actually centered on two areas of thinking, which I touched upon in my earlier post, Healthy, Wealthy, Wise and Happy.  I discovered that when people would talk about wealth and money and material things I would subconsciously be telling myself that those words did not apply to me.  I could hear my background voices saying “not me” , “never happen” and “bullcrap” (oh and it wasn’t actually bullCRAP I was thinking).  On weight loss I realized that I don’t believe that I can and will be thin again.  Notice I put that in the present tense?  I’m still working on that one.

I find this all very ironic. Here I am doing all the work; the reading, listening, journaling, meditating, taking action and praying, and all the while my own mind is stabbing me in the back!  If a friend or family member were saying the things to me that I am saying to myself I would be so hurt and angry.  I wouldn’t hang around them anymore.  Well how on earth was I to get away from Negative Nancy living rent free in my mind?  I finally figured it out.

I told myself to shut up.

I continue to tell myself to shut up all the time now.  Every single time I hear a negative thought I blast it out of my mind with a positive counteracting thought.  I have read and heard repeatedly that our minds are plastic. We can retrain our brains, we can form new neural pathways.  I believe that as surely as I believe the sky is blue.  So I know that I can create new pathways that will replace the old ones.  As a matter of fact, the idea of neural pathways makes sense of this whole “voices in my mind” thing .  I have heard so many of these thoughts from myself, my family and my friends for so long and so repeatedly that they are like ruts carved into my brain.  Well it’s time to bring out the road crew and do some re-paving.

I’ve been working on this for about three or four weeks and I find that I am definitely making some headway.  I won’t tell you that this is easy, but it is very worth it.  Now when I visualize myself with that big house with the giant kitchen it doesn’t feel fake, and I don’t hear any chatter in the background about it not happening.  I can feel myself responding more favorably to mentions of wealth and discussions about material things.  My belief is moving from theory to reality and I can feel a subtle shift in my mind.  As that belief is growing, my actions towards my dream are becoming more bold.  I have signed up a Life Coaching client who is a physician.  How’s that for bold?

I am honestly not having as much success on the weight loss issue, but I haven’t been focusing as much on that one.  I like to make changes in chunks. I find it more manageable that way

I encourage you all to take a moment here and there to quiet your minds and become aware of the voices of your limiting beliefs.  They may not have been put there by you.  They may be legacies of the family you were raised in, religious beliefs, general cultural norms and even TV commercials.  It doesn’t matter where they came from, what matters is that you tell them it is time to shut up and go away. If you don’t conquer yourself, you cannot conquer the world

I’ll keep you posted on my progress and I would love to hear about your own experiences as you being to eavesdrop on your mind.

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