Daily Gratitude: At first this seems both counterintuitive and impossible, to say nothing of being improbable. On closer examination though, it’s an important concept.

The reality of this is something I’ve learned recently (from a book titled “Don’t Believe Everything You Think”. At first I was not onboard with its concepts, thinking it made no sense and that it simply meant you shouldn’t pay attention to what’s happening in the world.

However, I have come to understand it better in the last couple of weeks. Here’s my interpretation: thoughts come to you from the universe. Thinking, though, is something we do, we create and therefore can lead us down paths we don’t really want to travel. We can change our thinking if we want and to me that means it’s generated from within and doesn’t come from the universe.

Here’s an example. I developed nerve pain in my arm which apparently was the result of being in the sling. Ok, fine. The thought was “this is pain, nerve pain. It’s bothersome.” What happened next, though, was of my own making. My mind started to go down the wrong road of “oh no. What if this is like the pain after shingles? It feels the same. Will it ruin my life again? I can’t handle that?’ What will I do?” Etc. This is thinking. And it’s not doing any good. It’s destructive, in fact.

So being wiser from having read the book, this is what I did: i recognized the “thought” (I have this pain) and then I was able to separate the second part (the destructive thinking) and I told myself “yes you have pain BUT you don’t know anything about what is going to happen with it. You’re just thinking and essentially creating these bad ideas that haven’t even happened yet”

This interruption allowed me to recognize what I was doing and stop it cold in its tracks. This kept me from going down that long and lonely road of “everything is ruined”. The interruption enabled me to stop and move on to something else. Thus, my brain wasn’t able to keep doing “zoomies” up and down one particular neural circuit in an activity that would possibly have led to chronic pain and suffering.

This is also the essence of the two arrow concept of pain and suffering.

Practice stopping yourself after you have a thought. Instead of “it’s raining so my weekend is totally ruined. Why does this always happen to me?” Go with “it’s raining. The other stuff trying to take over my mind is just my thinking and it’s not necessarily true so just stick to the fact that it’s raining and move on” then actually do the moving on. We’re masters of distraction nowadays so why not use it to our advantage. You will feel much better if you just stop with the thought (it’s raining). Try this for awhile. At first it may not be easy but it will be worthwhile.