THOUGHTS

I've been thinking about my thinking, taking notice of the patterns there.

I'm working on some mind mapping to identify the thought directions I want to encourage and expand, as well as recognizing the patterns I would do better to nip in the bud.

I can't find the original source of the quote right now, but someone once said: "Thoughts are like birds. They are going to fly over your head, but you decide if they will make a nest in your hat."

So I'm trying to shift things around a bit. It's time to de-clutter some of those nooks and crannies. Somehow I seem to have collected some junk in the old grey matter that I'm ready to sweep out. It's like cleaning out closets and dusting the corners of my house. It's a whole lot of effort to tidy up what doesn't really show.

But, as the scripture says: "As a man thinks, so is he."

I've been thoroughly socialized to know how to deliberately choose and govern my BEHAVIOR. I'm housebroken. I brush my teeth. I know how to set the table. I know how to go to work, how to take care of the necessary domestic duties, how to pay the bills. I smile and shake hands and know the appropriate rules for how to interact with others. I play nice in the sandbox.

But sometimes, on the INSIDE, in the dark and quiet crevices of my brain, chaos reigns. Even when I go through the motions of having it all together externally, my internal thoughtlife is sometimes like a runaway train. From fleeting images to patterned, habitual thinking...the content and context of my mental images lately is not what I want it to be.

It's not so bad when I am focused on a particular task or consciously playing attention to a particular topic at hand. However, I have been working on shifting the landscape of what I am willing to hold in my mind during default mode - in those quiet times when I am not deliberately thinking of anything at all.

Our culture prods us to pay attention to all the wrong things. We notice what isn't working or think about what we wish were different rather than fully experiencing gratitude for what we do have. Too much energy is spent in regret over things from the past or obsessively worrying over the future.

I want my thoughts to be more consistently focused on the present and built on a foundation of gratitude. That does not mean I will put on rose colored glasses and paint everything pretty even when there are legitimate problems to be dealt with. But it does mean that how I construct my self talk in my head can be more routinely driven by the questions like these:

"What am I grateful for?"
"How can I more fully show concern and support for others?"
"What blessings could I be noticing right now?"

I am convinced that if I am fully armed with that sort of mental ammunition on a day-to-day basis, then I will be far better equipped to deal with the conflicts or concerns that arise along the way than if my thoughts are perpetually spiraling along the lines of "why does this always happen?" or "I wish I would have...".

What do you think about when no one is looking, not even you?