I Caught Myself

One recent night while I was having trouble falling asleep, I caught myself. I was anxious because I was treating my thoughts as if they were reality. I was carefully pondering all of the possible scenarios that could arise from each counterproductive thought in my head. What could happen, what I fear may happen, what I will have to do if certain things happen in a particular order.
All of it was exhausting garbage. Totally unnecessary. Not based on fact. Conjecture and speculation. Self-created stress that I cause for myself inside of my own head. I was so relieved to catch myself and realize that I didn’t have to give those thoughts my attention. It’s so liberating.
It may be part of the human condition to dwell on negative thoughts, but we can all do a better job at catching ourselves sooner when we allow those thoughts to become front-page news. Remind yourself that a thought is not necessarily reality; it’s just a thought. A thought is a thought is a thought. Nothing more. It has no power to it unless you give it some. Just because you think something doesn’t mean it’s true and worthy of your careful consideration.
The reality is that we have a constant internal dialogue and think over 50,000 thoughts a day and it is norman. It can be difficult to consciously try not to think of something. In many cases, the best thing to do is just keep your constant internal chatter in the background. Practice allowing it to be there, but not paying particular attention to it. Think of it as annoying static on a television or radio. It may be in the background, but if you don’t pay attention to it or focus on it, it won’t irritate you. If you practice ignoring it, the same thoughts may be present but they lose their effect on you. Sooner or later you may just forget about it completely.
After all, can’t life be tough enough without making it worse than it has to be inside of your own head? Why torture yourself with your own thoughts?

~Kevin Stacey
www.trainrightinc.com