Important Things to Know about your Thoughts

Let's get right to it and let's be blunt, shall we? This past Sunday kind of sucked. Of course, even in the middle of something sucking, I’m thinking: This will make a great blog post as soon as I get through it! Sure enough, I got through it (with tear-streaked mascara tracks running down my face for much of it) and it seemed like there was some gold in there for you, which makes it all worthwhile.

What I wanted to share with you are 3 important things to know about thoughts.

1-Thoughts are magnetic

When you have an uplifting thought, other thoughts of the same frequency want to join in the fun, which is very nice.

On the flipside, when you have a thought that’s pessimistic, negative, sarcastic, resentful, angry and so on, you’ll notice many of its cronies seem to flood your brain. 

Case in point. On Sunday, I was cleaning our fantastic new home while my family did other things. A little pity party started brewing with a thought like: Why am I the only one taking care of our place?

Immediately, another thought of the same (low) caliber popped in: They’re all relaxing and I’m sweating up a storm (because of the heat wave + our vacuum that blows out hot air when in action. Does your vacuum do that too? Do all vacuums do that? At any rate, I was dripping. And griping on the inside.)

Many other negative thoughts lined up to get into the party. I let a few more in (My hair looks awful today! I don't want to go out this afternoon! *stomps feet; Am I supposed to do everything around here?!?) , until I remembered that I didn’t have to keep thinking those thoughts. I hired a bouncer!

(He looks like this:)

The bouncer that works best for a pity party is called Mula Bandha, which means squeezing all the muscles in your pelvic floor, like a Kegel. It works well because it gives your mind something else to do (beyond “Don’t think negative thoughts” which is not the best advice, because what else is your mind going to do?) It needs to focus on something else, and so Mula Bandha is the key here. To stop all those magnetic thoughts from raging out of control, you give your mind a different task, which is to focus on the sensation of squeezing. 

Your mind doesn’t think it will work, of course, but Mula Bandha is miraculous. You just have to do it over and over, like a bouncer has to stay at the door and decide who gets in and who doesn’t for the entire length of the party.

Key #1 Takeaway: Squeeze Mula Bandha 1001 times (or however many times it takes) when your thoughts are magnetized to a negative frequency.

2- You don’t have to buy into your thoughts

This point is soooooooo, soooooooo, soooooooo very important. In a nutshell, you don’t have to believe all the thoughts you think! Even as I was doing my internal grumbling, I had the awareness that the thoughts I was thinking weren’t true, which brought some measure of relief. 

What was really going on was that I had some anger energy bubbling up that was ready to be integrated and embraced (*not shoved down, ignored, suppressed or rained down on someone else) and so my circumstances created thoughts at the vibration of anger.  

Many things on Sunday had the anger flavour (honestly, I would have preferred more of a lemon lavender flavour). What’s important to note is that angry thoughts didn’t show up because “I’m an angry person” or “I have anger issues” or “my family was against me”. Anger was showing up because it was giving me yet another opportunity to integrate it and deal with it by breathing deeply. 

It took a whole bunch of incidents that day for me to finally decide to find the anger as sensation in my body and do the belly breathing, because a part of me was being 2-year-old stubborn, but once I did, it took only a few minutes to calm down and find resolution. The anger literally melted away because I paid good attention to it. 

Key #2 Takeaway: Deep belly breathing is ALWAYS the solution when you want to feel better.

3- How to know if your thoughts are true or false

Would you love to know which thoughts are coming from your Higher Self and which ones are trying to trick you? I thought so.

In some cultures, the ego is known as the Great Trickster and I just love that term, because it shows what’s really going on. Your ego is really trying to keep things familiar and predictable because the unknown is threatening. Safe = familiar. 

When things tend towards the unfamiliar, the Great Trickster will make up 100K+ thoughts to try to convince you to go back to the known, even if the known is painful and full of suffering. “At least I know what to expect,” says your ego.

When you realize that some thoughts are just tricks, it becomes much easier to see what your ego is up to, and then you can acknowledge it, thank it for trying to keep you safe and choose to ignore it.

And now for the Big Reveal! Thoughts are coming from the Great Trickster 100% of the time when they are negative or make you feel like caca. Thoughts that come from your Higher Self will either be positive in nature or neutral at worst. They will never be negative. 

I don’t know about you, but I think this piece of info is a game-changer. If a thought is negative, it’s clearly that Great Trickster, trying to maintain status quo. 

Prior to this past Sunday, I’ve had many, many incidences of feeling resentful whilst cleaning. It came up again this week as a gift to do something different about it. When I heard all that inner grousing, I noticed that it didn’t make me feel good, which clued me into the fact that those thoughts were coming from the Great Trickster. Of course it wasn’t true that I do everything and my family does nothing. It was just a very habitual stream of thoughts. I’ve been there before and so as painful as it was, it was familiar.

After a lot of chances throughout the day to do something different (ie-not be stubborn and suffer in silence), eventually things opened up after my deep breathing session and plenty of Mula Bandha-ing. My husband and I had a heart-to-heart with yet more tears (mascara gone by this point) and then we had a family check in where everything was resolved.

Here are the truths that my Higher Self inserted into my internal dialogue (the true thoughts I could trust):

>you have a big opportunity to show up differently here;

>you should really just do your breathing - you are sitting in the car with nothing else to do except keep on crying and feeling angry;

>asking for help would be a good idea;

>you don’t have to keep suffering!

See how wise that Higher Self is! Plus, it’s super persistent, thank goodness.

Key #3 Takeaway: Your ego’s thoughts are negative and therefore, not to be trusted. Your Higher Self’s thoughts are neutral to positive and very persistent.

So. That’s what helped me through a tough spot on Sunday. I hope it’s helpful for you too. 

Please note: it takes practice. That Great Trickster is a sneaky little fella and it works tirelessly. The way you trick the Great Trickster (so the messer becomes the messee) is to let it know that you know what it's up to and that it’s welcome to carry on. You just won’t be buying into its tricks anymore. Ta-Dah!

With comfort-zone-expanding love and flourishing courage,

Christina

Creator of Courageous Self-Care

Possibly in the market for organic waterproof mascara

Embracer of anger (eventually)

PS- Should you wish to join me for Courageous Self-Care in action this month, here’s the schedule for our community sessions. Click the image for more info.