Today’s Mandala
Thought
“Your thoughts greatly influence
— Amy Morin
how you feel and behave.
In fact, your inner monologue
has a tendency to become
a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Become aware of
— Rachel Goldman, PhD
how your thoughts are impacting
your emotions and behaviors.
Observe your thoughts.
Ask yourself
if this thought is helpful?
What purpose
is the thought serving you?
How does the thought make you feel?
“We are
— Swami Vivekananda
what our thoughts have made us;
so take care about what you think.
Words are secondary.
Thoughts live; they travel far.”
Today’s MotD encourages us to pay attention to our thoughts. As a general rule, thoughts trigger emotions which trigger some form of action. If the thoughts are negative, the results tend to be negative. If our thoughts are positive, the results tend to be positive.
Ideally, it suits us best to catch things at the thought level first. For here we can consciously determine if it’s negative or positive, and then decide if we want to follow through with it, reverse it, overwrite it, or let it go.
When a negative thought reaches the emotional level, it becomes more challenging to be aware of it, let alone letting it go. If we can catch it at the emotional level, we can take action to stop it (deep breathing helps). From here we can consciously determine how best to deal with it.
When a negative thought reaches the action level, it becomes even more difficult to become aware of it because we are deep into it. Often times it requires something outside of ourselves or a different internal voice to distract us for a moment, to break up the momentum. That snippet of awareness is the key to bringing us to the present and recognizing our current state.
Thoughtlessly following through on negative thoughts without conscious awareness is a highway to the danger zone. Practicing mindfulness on a regular basis can help with our potential for runaway thoughts. “Very Well Mind” offers some advice on to stop negative thoughts.
“The happiness of your life
— Marcus Arelius
depends upon
the quality of your thoughts:
therefore, guard accordingly,
and take care
that you entertain
no notions unsuitable to virtue
and reasonable nature.”
Blessings,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
btw…started with this:
Mandala of the Day 