Your Self Improvement Blog

I have been hosting Personal Development Seminars now for over fifteen years and still, after all that time practicing what I preach, I get out of bed some mornings niggled by stupid thoughts – or the little rascals come after me during the day, when I don’t expect it. Of course, I really should expect it because, unfortunately, the adult human seems to be obsessed with disrupting our desire to do our best in the course of our everyday lives.

Over seven decades of study in the field of psychology tells us that the ordinary mind is nothing short of a a hand grenade. Of course, you don’t need to look any further than your workplace, your tennis or golf club or your local newspaper for all the evidence that proves that research correct – and I haven’t even mentioned what you’ll find going on in the wider world! Ordinary crazed people are forever behaving inappropriately and it appears that they’re unable to help themselves. Of course, if you take all the research as a given, we are unable to stop it – because our minds are pre-programmed to pay previous little attention to reality and a vast amount of attention to all the nonsense that really isn’t going on at all. If we decided to look for a culprit, our useless thoughts would be a prime suspect.

We are bombarded by over 40,000 random thoughts every day – and that’s while we’re awake, so we’re not even looking at a twenty four hour period. Many of these thoughts are just stupid – like ‘I wish I was having a pint or lounging on a sun-chair than stuck at this boring meeting’ – thinking that you’d like to be somewhere else won’t alter the reality that you’re here! However, quite a few of our random thoughts are somewhat more toxic. I’m sure you’ve got your own personal versions but here are a few examples of those toxic thoughts. ‘I’m too shy to talk to her/him.’ (Delete as appropriate!!) ‘I would like to be more assertive and not let people walk all over me.’ ‘I could never get that job.’ ‘I’ll be happy when I’m three stone lighter.’

The issue with this kind of automatic thinking is that, first of all, they confirm that, if your life is not-too-bad, that’s OK. It isn’t. The even bigger problem is that these thoughts enable (and that’s clearly not the right word) your subconscious mind to pay attention to all the nonsense that it learned about you when you were a small child. These are the things – and don’t forget that the mind prefers to focus on the negative – that you currently believe to be true. They are the things that are holding you back.

Don’t misunderstand me. Your mind will never stop being plagued by useless thoughts – as you now know, it’s how we’re hard-wired. But you can decide whether or not you will give this nonsense any attention. After all, you have a very real alternative to wasting your time, or your life on all that nonsense – you can choose to pay attention to the reality of the here and now. And, if that reality involves enduring a mind-numbing meeting, you could discover that paying some attention to what’s going on might make you that bit more efficient, happier and more productive – the things that most people search for from life.

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