Your energy flows to where your attention is.
We tend to remember unpleasant things forever. Having had this bad experience does not seem to be enough – we let it wander through our minds again and again. And since thoughts evoke feelings, we experience the unpleasant every time anew. And we give away a lot of energy for something that a) can’t be changed anyway and b) isn’t even pleasant.
This may be due to the fact that evolution equipped us with a mechanism which is supposed to protect us from any danger. This mechanism leads to the fact, that we perceive everything that’s not working according to our ideas as unpleasant.
On the other hand, we do not spent much attention to pleasant things – we take them for granted.
In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, between all the things that are not going according to plan, an unbalanced overall picture quickly emerges in our heads, leaving us rather dissatisfied and tense.
The good news is – we are not helpless at the mercy of this imbalance. Our brain is an amazing masterpiece of nature – in a figurative way it is like a muscle. If we keep using and training muscles, they will grow and become stronger. Our thought patterns are like mental muscles. The question is: which mental muscle do you want to train?
There is a good way to train and promote our eye for the good and pleasant things in our lives. If you establish the following tip as a daily ritual, it will be particularly effective.
This week, consciously focus your attention on everything that goes well. Every evening, write down hree things that were pleasant, worked well, made you happy or made you smile. It doesn’t have to be anything spectacular at all – often it is the little gestures, moments or observations: the fresh coffee in the morning, the person in the tram who offers his place to an elderly lady, the sun on your skin …
If it is difficult for you to remember in the evening, you can also make a short note during the day – for example with your mobile phone – if you have experienced something positive. Then, allow yourself 5-10 minutes in the evening to review these notes again.
Go continue this ritual for longer than just one week. Soon you will probably come up with more than three things and your mind will be trained to get a more balanced and relaxed picture of the world.
By the way: if you are to experience one of these days you would rather prefer to forget, it helps immensely to take a look at the positive notes of the past days.
Take care three times,
Birgit