Thoughts & Beliefs Matter!

Once upon a long, long time ago when I was a college student, a few friends and I went to visit a Fortune Teller/Psychic who lived in a trailer just outside Hagerstown, Maryland.  As I curiously looked into her froglike bulging eyes, she told me 3 things that affected my future reactions…that I will never die in a plane crash, that I will always have enough money to take care of my needs, and that someday, I would be living on the west coast.

I believed her, and by accepting those positive thoughts/beliefs, I overcame the anxiety of flying and I never once worried about money knowing that the money I needed would always be there. And yes, I am now living in Los Angeles. These positive beliefs have served me well. On the other hand, had she told me I would always struggle with financial matters and had I believed it, my path and my encounters with financial challenges, might have been decidedly different.  I was fortunate her predictions were of a positive nature.

After administering one of my guided contemplative meditations in my class,   a student recalled that as child, whenever she did not meet the expectations of her Mother, she was told, “you will never amount to anything”.  After repeatedly hearing that statement through her adolescent life, it became embedded in her belief system.  She now suffers from General Anxiety Disorder and low self-esteem.  When she learned that her belief was not fact-based, she realized she now has the choice to “just let it be.” (and to treat it as a learned falsehood).

I had another student who explained that during his youth, his Father would often tell him, “Failure is never an option”. He adopted that belief as a truth and suffered much anxiety through his later years in school and college, especially, whenever he had to take an exam.  Later in his life, he feared taking risks that may have brought about positive productive change in his life.  He suffered from his inability to trust his potential. After realizing this detrimental false belief was not really his; but rather passed onto him, he is now free to make a choice to continue to react to it or to “just let it be”. 

What makes a thought feel real is the attention we bring to it. Without the juice of your attention, it simply disappears without a trace. Nancy Colier-Psychology Today Aug 2013

Mindfulness is an antidote to those negative beliefs that we cling to and that affect our ability to live a fully productive and joyful life. A daily practice of Mindfulness teaches us to become aware of the thoughts and beliefs we carry with us…sometimes consciously and sometimes sub-consciously.  Then we can choose whether or not we want to accept them as fiction and react to them in ways that are detrimental to our well-being (evoking stress, anxiety, depression, self-doubt, worry, etc.) or simply choose to acknowledge them and “let them be.”   When we stop allowing our thoughts to control us, we can begin to take control of our life, our happiness and our emotional and physical health.  We must realize that “thoughts are just thoughts…nothing more.

Choose your thoughts carefully. Keep what brings you peace, release what brings you suffering. And know that happiness is just a thought away. (Nishan Panwar)