Activities

Cultivating Peace of Mind: Strategy for Stopping Intrusive or Repetitive Negative Thoughts

This activity has been extracted from the Ask the Author response to -Finding Peace of Mind While Dealing with Serious Illness or Physical Ailment

When an intrusive or repetitive thought comes in, instead of judging, cursing it, and losing your peace of mind, try spending those 10 seconds in gratitude for it. For when a gift is given, do you not immediately smile and offer gratitude even before you have opened the box? What do you have to lose? Have you not tried it the ego-self way long enough? Now, you may ask what could 10 seconds an hour possibly do? I would reply that this effort might possibly change your life. For if you can take 10 seconds that you once believed as impossible to receive peace in, and you now encounter gratitude and peace, would this not open this same possibility in many more moments? Study different meditation techniques and slowly build mental resistance to your own thoughts. Anytime an intrusive thought of an illness or challenge tries to get me down, I stop it and refuse to let it rule me. I then offer thanks to God for the opportunity that He has allowed me to offer myself. He has entrusted in me the opportunity to take all my brothers and sisters who are dealing with these same issues to a more peaceful place. And as I take them there, I also get to experience this wondrous place. My friend, your thoughts don’t control you. You control your thoughts and meditation is one tool that allows you to understand this. Start taking control of what you allow your mind to focus on; increase from 10 seconds an hour, to 20 seconds, then to forty seconds, and so on. The simple knowledge and acknowledgement that you have a choice where you once believed you did not - this realization by itself will bring more peace into your life….

If you try to run a marathon without any prior training, you would most probably not finish. Yet, if you were to train for four to six months prior, it would be quite trouble-free. Working on taking control of your own thoughts is much like this. In marathon training, you might begin with a 3 mile walk/run. Four months later, a few weeks before the actual marathon, your practice run can be up to 28 miles. As in the first week of marathon training, you looked at that 28 mile run completion as an impossibility and total fantasy. Four months later, you’re in absolute bliss that you completed it. With meditation and commitment, you can start taking control of your thoughts. At first taking control of your mind for 10-20 seconds might seem like a small and stressful step but it’s a step in the direction where you truly desire to go. And soon that first step you once perceived as a walk up Everest, you will now know as a walk in the park.

Read more Spiritual / Self Development Activities which cultivate the concepts in the book 'You Have Chosen to Remember' - including Forgiveness, Embodying Your Godself, Developing Peace of Mind, and more.

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Cultivating Peace of Mind: Strategy for Stopping Intrusive or Repetitive Negative Thoughts This activity has been extracted from the Ask the Author response to -Finding Peace of Mind While Dealing with Serious Illness or Physical Ailment

Cultivating Peace of Mind: Strategy for Stopping Intrusive or Repetitive Negative Thoughts

This activity has been extracted from the Ask the Author response to -Finding Peace of Mind While Dealing with Serious Illness or Physical Ailment