About Words, thoughts, actions, reactions.

Thoughts are the undirected flow of images and words in your mind. You can choose to dwell on the ones you like, and are important to you, or you can dwell on everything your mind chooses to drop on you. There is nothing that says you need to act on every thought or that every thought is true or real. Thinking is personal, unique to you, and is just in your mind.

Words are just symbols of meaning, to which we attach feelings and emotions that seem to make the word mean so much more. It's not the dictionary meaning that is important, but the emotional investment you have in the word.

If you and your son or daughter are on the outs, try thinking about the word ‘son’ without feeling the anger or any emotion.

Even images of a memory are something you imagine because you attach emotional responses to it. Your focus is on those parts of the memory that are important to your emotional response. So if your father was strict with you, and you are still angry with him for this, you will focus on the strictness and downplay any kindness he may have shown.

And, if you think you have a 100% memory of what happened, then try this. What was the colour of the shirt your were wearing that day? What did you eat for supper that day? What were you smelling, tasting, hearing, feeling, touching, seeing all that day?

We only remember what we were focusing on, what we felt was important at that moment, and what was causing the most emotional response. We do not remember everything.

Thinking allows us to interpret ourselves and the world around us. It is justification of our actions, our beliefs, our being in the worlds around us. Thinking springs from our experiences and how we give them meaning. That meaning is personal and unique to ourselves.

For example, when I talk to my brothers and sisters about our parents, now deceased, I am often surprised at how they describe them. It is as if we each had different parents. And, in a way that is true. Not only have our parents unknowingly treated us differently, but we each focused on something different, something we each thought was important to us.

In every way, we each had different parents because the meaning we give the world in our mind is personal, unique and just in our minds. We control what we focus on in our minds.

If your mind is tied up with worry or regret, you are not concious of focusing on this moment. You are not in the moment.

Worry is dwelling on thoughts that create unpleasant feelings. Worry is about feeling and predicting that you will not be able to meet what is required of you.

Regret is dwelling on memories of past events.  The past is what it is. You no longer have the option to change it. The past in no longer present.

All you have is this moment you are now breathing. And in this moment you see, hear, touch, taste, smell whatever is in front of you that you conciously focus on.

That is not to say that it is sometimes worth thinking about the past. If you choose to review some past event to get back some old pleasant feeling or to see the lessons learned and do it consciously there is no problem. However, if you let worry or regret overwhelm you and govern you in the present, you are allowing feelings from the past and your imagination about the future to control you.

Your body reacts to everything you think or do with a flow of hormones and chemicals. These in turn generate associated brain chatter. The brain chatter is like a small computer program that runs whenever a feeling or event triggers it.

You can start to control this by realizing that it is your brain and you control it.
Then whenever your brain starts to chatter, you make a deliberate effort to call it just that "brain chatter". You dismiss it as not important. Do this often enough whenever you get the same unwanted feeling and  you will automatically think "brain chatter".

So next time you get a thought that causes to lose focus on this moment, examine what is happening in your mind, explore what is happening in your body, be aware of any tensions or feelings and know that they are coming from what you are thinking. You don't have to stay on those thoughts. You can focus on what you are living and breathing in now.