Create A New World

 

Thought Power

“You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

          I’ve been thinking and writing lately about how we create our experience of the world with our thoughts. It’s not that the material world morphs into whatever we imagine it to be, but that we see and hear selectively only what we expect to see and hear. It’s kind of like watching only one news source and believing what is spoken there to be the only truth. If we change the channel, we may hear the same story, but reported from an entirely different point of view. Perhaps both versions have merit, but neither is the only truth. We don’t have to create a chaotic and hairbrained world around us, and we don’t have to create ourselves neurotic and inadequate. Those are choices we make, and choices can be unmade.

          My mother was and still is a complete mystery to me. She’s been gone for fourteen years now, but occasionally I still hear her voice—sometimes coming from my own mouth. Mother never intentionally taught me anything—she didn’t have that much confidence in herself. But she inadvertently taught me a lot—some things I never want to do, and some that are simply genius. One thing she always said about a tragic or terrifying event, or when someone she loved was in trouble or did something stupid was: “I’m just not going to think about it.” And she seemed to be able to do that. She went about her business and didn’t entertain thoughts that upset her or made her angry.

          Now, psychologists call that "stuffing your feelings," and they’re probably right, but is stuffing your feelings worse than worrying and fretting about things you can’t change? Is it more damaging to your psyche to say, I can’t change this so I will simply banish it from my thoughts, or to spend miserable days and sleepless nights worrying about something you have no control over? It's a question worth pondering.

          We may think we can’t help our anxious and angry thoughts, but that is, once again, because we think we can’t. We don’t have to go down the misery rabbit hole every time our kids do something crazy, and we don’t need to rescue everybody around us. We can tend to our own business, like Mother did, and stay out of other people’s drama simply by changing the way we think about it. Start with this: “This problem does not belong to me. Therefore, I will leave it alone and trust Spirit to do what needs to be done—which may be nothing.” Conversely, if the problem belongs to you, then you take care of it! Don’t’ expect someone else to solve it for you.

We can create a calmer and sounder environment for ourselves just by controlling our thoughts. As Elizabeth Gilbert said, “This is a power you can cultivate.”

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane