What Occupies Your Mind?

There is a good chance that you don’t know/are not aware of what occupies your mind or else you are so caught up with the ‘goings on’ of your mind that you are unable to detach from it which means that you are unable to view it objectively. Either way the daily ‘goings on’ of your mind have a huge impact on your life.

They say that over 95 percent of our thoughts are the same as the previous days’. These could be anything from worrying about the future, complaining, judging others/situations or just any other mental chit-chat.

Even if this mental clutter isn’t causing you intense suffering, it is still distracting you from your natural feeling of well-being. If you free up your mental space, it allows for things like inspiration, motivation and creativity to flow through which would otherwise be getting blocked out with all of your attention (conscious or unconscious) on your mental chatter.

You will first have to become aware of the habitual thoughts that occupy your mind on a daily basis. You can do this by catching yourself thinking at random times during the day and writing your thoughts down. After a while you should see a pattern developing and when you become aware of a mental pattern, it is much easier to catch yourself in the act of thinking it.

You should not block the pattern out (even if it is uncomfortable to allow surface in your awareness). You can just allow the thoughts/patterns to be. By being aware, you have cut the fuel supply (your attention) and by allowing it to be, you are allowing it to burn itself out. Each time a thought pops up or gets triggered, it is using energy to do so. Thoughts have a limited energy supply which means that it will burn out with time. The amount of energy present in a thought/mental pattern depends on how long it has been programmed into your mind and the amount of attention/focus (conscious/unconscious) that has been given to it.

You have to be honest with yourself as you become aware, you may find that you spend a lot of time complaining or judging others and the world around you. If this is the case just accept where you are right now and know that these patterns are just programming that slipped in under your conscious awareness and begin the journey of freeing yourself from them.