Day 140 - A Year to Clear - Check In WEEK 20 - Changing the Channel

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Lesson 140: Check In WEEK 20 - Changing the Channel

This week has been to challenging to bring about more mindfulness. You really have to catch yourself in your thoughts sometimes. Anything that doesn’t serve you well, you should definitely recognise, assess why you had that thought and then ready yourself for release. I think this can be especially difficult if you’re very emotional and get stuck within that thought. For various mind clutter, I think it’s easier to do. It’s really about assessing what you need and what you don’t need.

There are always going to be situations that make you uncomfortable, and I think the lesson is trying to teach you that even though you may have a negative or upsetting thought, that’s fine, but it’s about striking those that are no benefit to you or turning the thought around to something that does serve you.

I find that I am still very much trying to teach this to myself. I find that most of my frustrating thoughts occur at work. I have to really not get caught up in my emotions and feelings, stopping myself from blowing up and just thinking of a better way to do things. I try not to lose myself but it can be quite hard. Sometimes situations and people rub you up the wrong way, so you can’t help but rage. In those moments, I’m really trying to apply myself in thinking of better outcomes and trying to make my work environment a more accommodating place for myself.

The exercise this week has really tested me to be more mindful. It takes a lot of self-awareness to think about the thoughts you have and how you can think better or differently towards your situation. It’s definitely a good skill to have if you can master it. Right now, I’m very much at hard work with it and will continue to do my best to get rid of the mental clutter that does not serve me well.

Day 138 - A Year to Clear - Reeling In The Monkey Mind

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Lesson 138: Reeling In The Monkey Mind

Today references a Buddhist term “Monkey Mind” that involves all the noise we create in our heads – doubtful, fearful, over thinking, over complication, internal fights, attachments, unsettling, upsetting, impatient, anxious thoughts. This is the clutter we create and it takes practise to tell them “no” or train ourselves to think differently. We are “reeling in the monkey” and usually these thoughts are usually stuck because of our own habits.

When our mind is becoming frantic, all we need to do is stop, close our eyes and breathe. At first, we may resist but the idea is to keep practising it. The more we give the monkey mind space, we will find it calms down. I know the practise of taking a moment, really calms my mind. I think if can take those moments, then we really see ourselves calmer and clearer to make decisions.

Stephanie Bennett Vogt describes this as “spacious detachment”. The way I interpret that is detaching yourself from the noise to welcome in spaciousness. I don’t think it’s to ignore those thoughts, but to have a more mindful approach to the noise that enters your mind. Is it a thought that you can mentally throw away? Or is it something you need to work through and then let go? Either way, it’s about reducing the clutter in your head to be clearer.

Day 137 - A Year to Clear - Not Allowed

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Lesson 137: Not Allowed

Once someone has said or done something towards you, it’s hard to forget what’s been said or done – wouldn’t you agree? I still remember the kids bullying me as a child and all the hurtful things they said. The power that words and actions have upon us is profound. There is no erase button for a thought that enters your mind as a result of things said or done from others, and even yourself!

Today’s lesson is all about how to ignore any comments or actions that are so powerful to cloud our minds. Stephanie Bennett Vogt’s message is “Bottom of Form

You just. Don't. Go. There.” It does sound so simple. Is it that simple though? She then proceeds to give a courtroom judge’s example of instruction when they remove a message from the record “Nope, can't use it. Sorry, not allowed.”

Honestly, this would take so much training to program your mind to let negative comments go. Even when people lace up their words with “no offence but…”, it’s a set up for a negative comment. I think for some of us, we can be reactionary. When someone says something, we may fire up and blast them for it. Other times we just soak up negative actions towards us and then we can curl into our self, and then close off. There are so many scenarios of how we as humans deal with things said or done to us. If we are to not to go there, it would take some processing on our part:–

1.       Stop and think about what’s been said.

2.       Process it in your mind so you don’t react.

3.       Accept it as something that was said or done.

4.       Don’t let it absorb further than just a comment or action.

5.       Move on.

I think with practise this can be achieved. If we are trying to not overwhelm ourselves with negativity, I think it’s a good practise. Though when you’re having some good conversation and there may be an odd comment flung here or there, would you have enough time to go through those steps in order to not absorb the comment fully? Like, if you’re so engrossed, would you want to stop or just keep the conversation flowing, taking a moment later to refer back to it? I guess this is something that you’d have to consider, or not consider, and create practises that work for you to not absorb the negative actions.

I mean, the only thing I do is visualise a protective bubble around me and I ask that of spirit and the Universe to turn anything negative towards me into something positive or useful for me, otherwise I want the negative to bounce off it and go back to the Universe. So far I’ve found this visualisation to really work for me and I don’t feel people’s negativity rubbing off on me. Maybe I’ve subconsciously not absorbed negative stuff for a while and not realised I’m already practising it.

All I can say is, try this way of trying to release negativity from you and see what it does for you. I can only imagine good things.

Day 136 - A Year to Clear - Zip It, Zap It

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Lesson 136: Zip It, Zap It

Eradicating obstructive thoughts takes a lot of awareness. It does take routine over and over to recognise when a thought does not serve you and it’s hard to come out of some negative cycles. With the lesson from the last post of “Strike that”, Stephanie Bennett Vogt lists some examples of what types of thoughts may roam in our brain and essentially what we need to strike out of our thought processes:

• [Aghhh] The traffic is terrible, we're going to be late to the airport, we're going to miss our plane, our vacation is shot. Strike that.
• [Ugh] This task is taking forever. I don't think I'll ever finish clearing my piles. It's time to check my emails. Strike that.
• [Groan] I have no time, there's no food in the fridge, the house feels cold, I'm fried, this day has gone from bad to worse. Strike that.

What we do need to acknowledge is how we feel during those types of thoughts – do we feel tightness in our chest? Do you feel you heat up? Do you feel muscles tighten? Do we tense up? Does our breathing change? Etc.

Today is all about zapping out any negative thoughts right in this second. Mine for today is all the feelings I have towards my work situation. I am trying to change my thought processes – even went to a councillor to get the advice to think better. What was explained to me is that my expectations can be set too high and when they are not met, I become frustrated and anxious because I’m waiting on things to happen that are outside of my control. I’m working on it for sure though I find it difficult when all you want is some direction in your work life. If the management don't have answers when you need them to give directives, it makes you question their ability to lead. I recognise that I get tense when I think about this. This seems to happen in random places of my body. I can heat up as well because I’m usually frustrated and angry over it. I am trying to change this way of being around as it is wasted energy.

All I can say is that I am mindful of it and putting things into place to be calmer. I was told by my councillor to lower my expectations of the company in order to not become anxious or frustrated. The company needs time to figure it out so if I be more understanding from that point of view, then it will allow me to return to my normal self. This is what I’m working towards and I admit I have not conquered it yet. I do recognise what I need to change in order to overcome this situation. I am sure I will be fine.

Day 135 - A Year to Clear - Strike That

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Lesson 135: Strike That

So, what’s one thing that dominates our life? Our own minds. It floods with both negative and positive thoughts. When I tried to google how many thoughts does an average person have in a day, it answered with up to 70,000. To me, that seems excessive because you can be debilitated with one thought that repeats over and over in your mind, and I just don’t actually think that many thoughts pass through my brain. I know I have had one negative thought engrained in my mind cycling through my mind because I just wouldn’t let it go away. It was all consuming. I thought max you might get a few hundred at most. Maybe I just don’t think so a lot?

Anyway, the point of today’s lesson is to teach us how to keep the noise that clouds our mind out. That we can use a simple term (which Stephanie Bennett Vogt says happens in a courtroom quite often) “Strike that”. obviously, this requires a lot of awareness by yourself. You need to recognise the noise as something that doesn’t serve you in order to block it out. This would take so much practise, only because we can succumb to other peoples thoughts and have it influence us. It’s about training ourselves to be like “No, this doesn’t resonate with me and therefore I shouldn’t think about it further”. Sounds easy but when I actually think about this concept, it would actually be training your brain to filter things out automatically. At first, you’d be assessing everything said to you before it became a routine, and then blocking out certain things that don’t benefit you or your mind.

Do you think this can be a simple task?