The Mind Matters - Are you conscious?
I find the mind so fascinating. An unseen intelligence that can process so much information at once. We have something like 60,000 thoughts a day. Which is slightly crazy, but in reality you are only aware of a small percentage of what you are actually thinking and many of the thoughts are unfortunately negative in nature. As humans, we are instinctively programmed to look out for danger, so in the 21st century this maybe your health, money, relationships, career, family, household etc.
What I find amazing is that we can think of what to cook for dinner, drive a car and breathe all at the same time. Well we can do all these tasks because of our minds, which consists of the conscious and subconscious. The conscious mind being the creative mind and the subconscious mind being the habit mind. I am grateful to the subconscious mind as we don’t need to remember to breathe, but our poor conscious mind gets a bit forgotten. Why? Well with the constant go go go in our lives it is like we are running on auto pilot and somehow we are wondering how on earth it is October already!
So many of the tasks we do each day are routine; they are second nature and we don’t even realise we are doing it or thinking it, we are mainly connecting to our subconscious mind. For example, locking the door when you leave the house, this is such an automatic action that sometimes you stop and question whether you did lock the door, sound familiar? Even though I am so grateful that my subconscious mind handles all the bodily processes to keep me alive, unfortunately it also runs and reruns all the other stuff like your reactions to what happens through your day, mindset, beliefs, emotions, basically it is your default programming.
You maybe thinking so what, why does this matter. Well if you are happy living in a reality of stress and poor health keep going, BUT, if you are trying to make changes to your life and part of the change is because you wish to have a more joyful and fulfilling life then keep reading.
I wish to bring to your attention some concepts that can help you to support your journey of living more consciously. Being intuitive you’d think I would excel at this, well you would be right hahaha just joking I definitely scored a fat ‘F’. My upbringing definitely did not instil in me about living consciously and what I learned instead was everyone else’s negative and fear based behaviours. I am very empathic so I was very aware of others feelings and was a conscientious student, but that was about it. I lived in fear just like everyone else. The difference now is I am aware of it and that is the first step. Awareness = Consciousness.
My light bulb moment. Someone very honest in my life basically told me to stop blaming others for how I was feeling. I was like, what are you taking about. They explained that when you get upset that is your choice. The other person maybe out of order, but the reaction is something you need to own. This concept was not easy to digest, but it was the beginnings to why I chose to start living more consciously and to be more accountable in my own life. You see, we mainly live in our default programs our subconscious mind. So when we get triggered by something we easily default back to the reactions we have previously learned.
Where to start? You can tackle this multiple ways. Lets start with something simple like observing our thoughts. I considered myself a positive person, I didn’t realise how many negative thoughts I actually had of myself and life. This was quite an eye opening experience catching these negative thoughts and beliefs. I started to journal, writing down these thoughts and what I found was how repetitive some of the thoughts were.
Some of mine included: It is safer to be invisible, work hard = more rewards, others are more important, you are not worthy of an easy life, I am not smart enough, there is never enough money, that’s too expensive, I am busy, I never have enough time. I am sick of being sick, I am so tired and fed up.
What do you then do with all these thoughts? I consciously started to stop a thought when I realised it was negative. I hold my hand up as I am a perfectionist and wanted to change it all at once. Well this just overwhelmed me even more and I wanted to give up. More great advice came my way and I took a different approach. I consciously decided to be gentle and compassionate with myself. Whatever thoughts I caught that were not supporting me, I would just breathe away and I was grateful for my awareness. When you learn anything new it takes practise.
To help with this I started saying affirmations. Affirmations are amazing as they are positive thoughts that can help to raise your mood and energy vibrations anytime of the day. I say my affirmations in my head many times a day and have them posted around the house, car and my desk at work. Some of my favourites are today is a great day, I am worthy, I am seen and I am enough, everything is always working out for me, the Universe has my back, I am in perfect health, thank you for the abundance that flows to me everyday.
Consistent practices like journalling, meditation, breath work, yoga, conscious resting, EFT, energy healing, gratitude can all support you to stay more conscious through your day.
This is just the start when it comes to choosing to live more consciously. When you start to realise the choices you are making, you are truly stepping into your power. You can’t make anyone else change, but you can change yourself. When you start this process of healing you never heal alone and this is when you open up yourself to miracles in your life.
Love Sarah xx