Thursday 10 November 2011

THOUGHT

Our THOUGHTS determine our DESTINY!!!

Thinking leads to Belief
Belief leads to Action
Repeated Action forms Habits
Habits decide our Character
Character determines our Destiny

George Miller, in his book " The Psychology of Communication" estimated that humans have thoughts at a rate of 7 +/- 2 per second. That is approximately 25000 thoughts per hour. Out of this 25000 thoughts how many thoughts we are conscious of? This shows our present state of AWARENESS.

If you want to know what type of thoughts you were entertaining, see your present circumstances and they will reveal. Similarly, if you want to know what future holds for you, watch your present thoughts.

Controlling Thoughts: Successful people control their thoughts. What I mean here is that they control the meaning they want to give to the thoughts and not necessarily controlling the arising of the thoughts. It is very difficult to control our thoughts, though not impossible. The reason is thoughts travel faster than light. Light travel approximately 300000 Kilometres per second. The SUN we see now is what the SUN was 7 minutes before. It takes 7 minutes for light to travel from the SUN to the EARTH. Thought is much faster than light. You can THINK of the SUN within a fraction of a second. Hence it is very difficult to control thoughts. What we can do is to reduce the frequency of thoughts per second by increasing the gap between two successive thoughts. This is what we do in meditation. Practice the following to reduce the frequency of thoughts:

1. Simply observe thoughts as they arise without judging them.
2. Don't Resist any thought.
3. Don't Hold on to any thought.
In the process you detach yourself from thoughts by being a witness of the thoughts.

How do you know that your thoughts are working for you(not against you)? As we mentioned earlier, it is very difficult to control thoughts but it is relatively easier to observe the feeling(the other side of a thought)we have. Whenever we feel good that means our thoughts are working for us and the converse is also true.

Sources of our thoughts:
1. Our memory.
2. External objects.
3. Our Desires.
4. Our Imagination.
are the major sources of our thoughts. We can control the quality of our thoughts by controlling our sense organs and our desires. Our conscious mind's ability to direct our focus and its ability to imagine can change our life based where we focus and what we imagine. Only human beings are bestowed with this two abilities(ability to focus & ability to imagine). Let us make the best use of these abilities to empower ourselves.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for this excellent article.

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  2. I was just ruminating on the sources of our thoughts to see if all of them were important.How True!Can't deny that all the four are interdependent.Great sharing!

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