By Gudrun Frerichs
I have heard the other day that the average person has between 50 and 70 Thousand thoughts each day. Oh my goodness, that is between 35 and 50 thoughts a minute. No wonder I can't remember where I put my keys this morning. That information is lost in the tornado of thoughts that is going through my brain.
There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to the content of the thoughts we produce. It seems to come from all corners of our inner world, past, present, and future, as well as from stimuli from our environment. We are, or better our brains are, truly thought-producing machines.
Many of these thoughts will pass through our mind like a wee little flicker, barely noticed or not even noticed at all. Like an electric storm that runs through our neuro networks, fed by an energy I can only describe as life force. Buzzing, and buzzing all day long. Not only that, also buzzing at night, coming to us as dreams. Because it's our thoughts that cause our feelings its interesting to notice on which of the 35 to 50 thoughts a minute we focus on, isn't it?
You may just have spilled a perfectly brewed coffee on your white carpet and start telling yourself off for being so clumsy, having ruined the carpet and so on and so on. It will be no surprise that you feel grumpy or depressed or ashamed, depending on what exactly you've been telling yourself. You might even have delved into the memory box and picked out other incidences from your earlier life where you have been clumsy and been told off for it... there is no end to thoughts that will confirm your initial response to spilling the coffee. With a little bit of hard thinking work you could manage to set yourself up for a pretty lousy day!
If you have this kind of incidences happen more regularly, you could even end up at your doctor's practice and be given some antidepressants for what some people like to call 'chemical imbalance'. Well, your thoughts might have caused a chemical imbalance, but it was your thinking all along, wasn't it?
It's important to realise as soon as you notice your thoughts that they are not real. They are just thoughts. You are not clumsy, you just spilled coffee and it left a mark. End of story! Happens all the time, all over the world. Is a stained carpet worth you being on antidepressants for the next 20 years? I am sure the pharmaceutical industry would say YES, of course. Our livelihood depends on it.
Having between 35 and 50 thoughts a day, just check out with for yourself which ones you would rather focus on. Let the self-punitive ones pass through your mind, don't feed them, and wait for better ones to float to the surface. They will come: remember there are 50 to 70 thousand thoughts coming your way today. Let's have a competition: Who's got the best ones!
Gudrun Frerichs, PhD is the director and founder of Psychological Resolutions Ltd. Visit her website http://www.gudrunfrerichs.com for information about counselling and training courses for professional and personal development. Her focus is on helping people to access the power of their mind so that they create the life they aspire to.
No comments:
Post a Comment