Yesterday I shared my personal experience with conscious focusing. There is a ton of neuroscience that explains why we get trapped in thought loops and in the future we’ll be looking into those. The biggest misconception lies in the assumption that we are at the mercy of our mind. When actually the mind is the most amazing tool imaginable and it’s 100% at our service. It can be helpful if we know how to direct it, and harmful if we let it drive the ship. Yes we have subconscious & instinctive reactions, but with practice you can become conscious and aware of when those are taking over. You may not be able to control how you instinctively react, but you can control how you respond.

To do so we literally have to weaken existing brain passages and reroute them elsewhere. Our brain does not like change or having to redefine what it thinks it already knows. So to really get this working will take practice, time, and constancy.

To begin it’s as simple as this….notice what you’re thinking about. Not all day, but sometimes during the day step out of your thoughts & look at what you’re thinking about. You don’t have to judge it, say it’s good or bad, or that you should be thinking about something else. Just notice it. Looking at your thoughts, from outside of them, gives them a demotion in power. Because if you’re the observer….who’s doing the thinking?

As you get used to noticing your thoughts, pay attention to when you’re thinking about things that make you unhappy, anxious, sad. What’s happening in your environment? What were you thinking about just before you had the emotion? What was the thought cascade that it brought on? By looking at this domino effect objectively, you can start to map out the associations in your brain pathways. Seeing them is the first step to healing.