All Thoughts

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s The Healthiest Year of Your Life, which can be found at http://thehealthiestyearofyourlife.com. In this excerpt, Byron Katie shares on her moment of transformation and turning our negative thoughts and beliefs around.

The Healthiest Year of Your Life with Byron Katie, founder of The Work and author of three best selling books whose mission is to teach people how to end their own suffering.

Kevin: I want to talk to you about how you got to where you are now.

Byron: Excellent. So how I got here was I was extremely depressed. I didn’t know how people got there, the there that we all want to be, but I knew that if I didn’t know how to get out of that suffering, Kevin, I just thought you had to die to get out of that kind of suffering. For this I had no clue. I didn’t have a religious background, nothing, no one and my self esteem was so low that I actually slept on the floor next to my bed.

Kevin: Huh.

Byron: And I didn’t believe I even deserved that, to sleep on a bed. So, one morning as I lay sleeping, actually a cockroach crawled over my foot and woke me up and I opened my eyes and in place of all that darkness was a joy that I try to describe and I’m unable to, because it always falls short, but what I can tell you was the suffering was gone and it was so much better than anything I have ever experienced. In fact, it was really beyond experience . These thoughts hit my head just like they hit everyone. I was without thought. It was just that gap that Deepak talks about and all of a sudden all these thoughts just hit that gap and, Kevin, after seeing, you know, that moment without thought it was such an education that when the thoughts poured in I could no longer believe them. They were there. They were loud and clear and I began to laugh and laugh and laugh.

So I like to say I was born out of the laughter and it was long, long, long overdue and so to this day thoughts are my friends and I invite everyone to be a friend to thought, that thought is not an enemy. Our mind is not an enemy and I invite people to find out for themselves, to check it out for themselves and the way to do that is I offer people four questions, just four simple questions that you’ve put up against the concept.

For example, he doesn’t care about me, or she doesn’t care about me. It could be any concept, but if we look at that one the first four questions are: Is it true he doesn’t care about me? Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Third question, How do you react when you believe that? And that gives everyone the experience of noticing that all the feelings and everything they live out is in accordance with what they are believing and mind is cause and The Work – that’s what I call it – The Work it shows that clearly. Then the fourth question, who would you be without that thought? In other words, don’t drop the thought. Thoughts aren’t enemies. Just simply, who would you be if you didn’t believe that?

And then consider that and with meditation, all four questions and then I invite people to do the 180, the turnaround with it and turn it around. He does care about me and then get very still and notice all the feelings that surface around that. Just the idea of that, of confronting that, of looking at that and sometimes it takes a lot of courage to do the work, but it takes more courage not to. You begin to find examples of where he was kind. When the mind opens, it goes into a whole other polarity and there’s no trickery here. It’s the real thing, genuine. We don’t have to come up with untrue positives on views. We don’t have to be kind about it. It doesn’t take away the others. That’s not the point. It’s just we’re giving them a new view. Another turnaround is I don’t care about him and define examples of that and then we feed them to make amends and if we’ve hurt them to find how can we make this right? Another turnaround, I don’t care about me and my goodness, Kevin, when some of us look at that it’s like oh, my goodness. How can I expect him to care about me when I don’t care about me? No one would see me in the horrible way, the distorted way that I viewed me, but I didn’t have The Work, so I had to continue to believe my thoughts about this wonderful, wonderful human being called Byron Katie, that I’ ve come to respect.

Kevin: So, Katie, how did it develop? Did it come from that moment?

Byron: It came from that moment.

Kevin: Okay.

Byron: I would tell people, “Your thoughts aren’t true, you’re thoughts aren’t true and they would look at me like “Oh, my gosh. She’s crazy.” But still people wanted to know this freedom. I was such a turnaround that my family didn’t recognize me. My friends didn’t recognize me . I was agoraphobic. It was very difficult for me to leave my house, even my bedroom more often than not. So here I am with my doors wide open, people traveling in from all over the world to see what this experience was about and so when their minds were open to it I would help them. They couldn’t hear their own thoughts, so I would invite them to put their thoughts on paper and try to find, what I call, a judge of the world worksheet and they would write their thoughts down and because they were doing it themselves, they really got that these were the thoughts that I, myself am thinking. So when they wrote them down they had to own them when I questioned “Is it true?” Is it true the thing you believed all your life? Are you sure it’s true? Do you believe everything your mommy told you?

Kevin: Wow.

Byron: Basically they do.

Kevin: Processing and evaluating your thoughts to some can be a scary thing. I think it is to me sometimes.

Byron: Oh, my goodness. You never know who you are without your thoughts, but what I can tell you, Kevin, from my experience and the experience of millions of people that are doing to work is they always come out as kinder human beings, more open, more prosperous, healthier and I went from this more than 200 pound woman that couldn’t move to literally not fat. My heart rate — the physical body has everything to do with what you believe in.

Kevin: Let’s talk about that now. What do you think is the role between emotional health and your thoughts and physical pain, physical ailments, physical manifestation?

Byron: Well, when we believe our thoughts we suffer and when we question them we don’t suffer. I have come to see that this is true for every human being. So any time we’re confused and I’ve noticed the confusion is the only suffering and any time we’re confused I invite people to put it on paper. Any time you’re confused, you put it on paper and then just simply put it up against these four questions and the questions are always free on my website. You don’t have to sign up for anything. You don’t have to log in. There they are front and center and it tells you how to work them and it has everything to do with emotional health. It’s like the third question: how do you react when you think the thought they don’t like you? What happens? What happens, Kevin? When you got back to middle school or the yard when you were five or six years old or a teenager, what happens when you think the thought they don’t like me?

Kevin: You kind of walk away or kind of put your head down.

Byron: You walk away and you kind of put your head down. Okay, that’s how we react when we believe that thought. So that’s emotional. So what happens, it doesn’t end there. When you believe that thought the next time someone just looks at you in the classroom you think they’re one of them and then you go home and your mom is really happy to see you, but your self-esteem is low and you think “How could she? No one does.” I mean it begins to transfer our whole lives. It makes up our whole life and we have just looked at one stressful thought. “They don’t like me.” Now, who would you be on that same playground or whatever images you were picturing — you see that little boy?

Kevin: Mm hmm.

Byron: Okay, look at the same exact situation. Who would you be without the thought the thought “They don’t care about me?”

Kevin: So without that thought “They don’t care about me,” just, I guess playing with them.

Byron: You’ve got it. So what we’re learning here, Kevin, from you, is that what we are believing dictates our emotional life and what we’re believing in our emotional life dictates the world for the rest of our lives. It’s like if you look at your life prior to believing they don’t care about you, oh, what a happy little guy and then little kids don’t have The Work and big kids don’t all have it, but even if they turn that around “They don’t care about me,” turn it around, “I don’t care about them.” Look at me. I’m the one walking away. I’m the one that won’t talk to them again, because I’m believing they don’t care about me. I’m the one not caring about them, because of what I believe and they don’t care about me turned around, I don’t care about me. I’m costing me my life on the playground, if nothing else. I’m costing me my friends and associations and play time and our whole life and another turnaround is, “They do care about me.” And then just get still and look at that little boy and see what he missed. It won’t change your whole life today, because we are that little boy until we go back and take a look and get it squared away and we can do it from a chair. We can change our whole life from where we sit and he can go back and actually, you can see. They’ll say “Come on, come on.” You think “Oh, they don’t really care about me. They’re just trying to be nice.” It’s like as though we see them as liars, but if we go back, we can hear them calling and we don’t have to imagine it, even though imagination is everything. We can go back to how we saw reality and we can hear the people we ignored, because we were so into believing the thought “They don’t like me.” So in a nutshell that’s The Work and it is. People try to change their life and life isn’t going to ever change. It doesn’t change. We still have war on this planet. We haven’t really advanced. There is only one way to change the world and that is to do the inner work and end the war with the self and then everything that is projected out of it, the entire world shifts when you do. That is how to change the world.

Thoughts on Cassel going to Hawaii
The Kansas City Chiefs have officially announced that quarterback Matt Cassel has been named to the Pro Bowl in Hawaii on Jan 30. Cassel replaces an injured Tom Brady (didn’t that happen somewhere before?) as the No. 1 alternate. The following are some random thoughts on Cassel’s promotion: This is a nice reward for a player who made great strides in his second season in Kansas City. Cassel …
Read more on ESPN Blogs

Tags: Around, Author, Byron, Information, Katie, Negative, Shares, Thoughts, Turning
Posted in Thoughts | | No Comments »

Free your mind and travel through the infinite possibilities of thought. You will see how multifaceted you can use the powerful tool that is lying in your hands. Every individual person is naturally able to change his own reality. Discover the power of thought and combine it with the strength of your will and all your wishes and deisres will be already on the way to be part of your life. You are able to increase your standards and live a fulfilled life.

The main reason, which holds people back from their goals is lack of concentration. Once you fell a decision the first thing you need to do is to protect yourself against inner and outer disturbances. Every hint of thought, which disapproves your wish will baffle the process. This derangement represents parasite frequencies in your brain waves, which manipulate your thoughts. Negative thoughts are the main cause to disturb the concentration, so that you cannot focus on your wish with enough decisiveness.

The brain reflects the incessant process of thinking through brain activity. You need to give your brain orders in an appropriate language so that it is able to execute your commands. The only language, which your brain understands is Thought. You can reach your inner sub conscious self through thoughts.

The inner mind-map is set by our sub consciousness as the sum of all the information we experience through our lifetime.We know that the inner mind-map of our self in its sub conscious state constitutes our attitudes and character traits. And again we know that our identity which is mirrored to our outside environment is constituted by these attitudes and character traits. This means that if you want to change your life or if you want to change the way how other people perceive your identity, you first need to change your attitudes and character traits.

All human beings do possess the ability to change his inner mind-map, because they do possess the power of thought. We want to get to the bottom of this, by telling you how you can use your thoughts in order to profoundly chance your life and live it the way you want. This treasure is naturally lying inside you: your thoughts. Here you will get some examples about how to take advantage of this natural property. Thought has the absolute authority over the brain and over the sub consciousness. The brain again has the absolute authority over reality and over the reflection of your identity in the outside reality.

So, if your thoughts can control the brain and the brain, which again controls and constitutes your reality, we can say that you can easily control and constitute your own reality. If we go a step further we can also say that you alone are responsible of your own reality. If you are sad, then its you, who makes you sad. You are only looking for outside reasons to blame them for your sadness, but in truth all is in your hands. You decide whether you want constitute your reality upon happiness or sadness. Today, with quantum physics science has reached the point where this undeniable fact is approved. Science as well as psychology has approved that: thoughts create reality.

The reality you live in, reflects your thoughts. If you don’t like your reality and want to chance your life, you simply have to change your thoughts. We want to give you advices how to practice this in your everyday life. With these concentration and everyday practices you will gain control over your thoughts and hence over your whole life.

We want to convince you of the powerful instrument that is lying in your hands. Your thoughts are the main tool to control your feelings, attitudes and your reality. If you use this precious tool knowingly, consciously and wisely, you can take it for granted that you will succeed. You will soon discover the ability that you are indeed able to attract everything and everybody whenever, where ever and to what extent you like.

The flow of your thoughts actively creates your life. When you get experienced in consciously giving direction to the flow of your thoughts, you will automatically take control over your life. You only need to control your thoughts the rest will happen almost automatically. If you are honest to yourself, you will realize that right now your life is not controlled by your thoughts. It’s rather controlled by coincidences and many public manipulations. Take it seriously, practice regularly and you will create advantageous opportunities into your life, which will bring you nearer to your wishes. Your will approach to your desired way of life with every passing day.

Realize! Believe! Know! … andyour wishes simply become your everyday reality.

Want it and you will get it… for sure!

Are you ready to get to the secret of how to include this indisputable knowledge into your everyday life..?

Even though the human brain does never stop thinking, it does not care if your thoughts are actively or passively created. Unfortunately the majority of people does not consciously apply the process of thinking. Therefore their thoughts are passively pushed in every direction. In these cases the person cannot focus on his own particular wishes. If you don’t have a proper opinion about what you really want, your thoughts will be scattered over and over again. Here are some practices, which you will learn active thinking with.

It is just a question of concentrating on the right thought. At the beginning it is important to take your time. You need to be experienced in controlling your thoughts in order to go on with the next steps. Everything will be based on this foundation. For this purpose you should seriously plan into your day enough free time, where you can just relax and have a couple of minutes or maybe an hours for yourself. At the beginning you should practice every day. If you want to be successful even faster, you should repeat this practice a few times per day. There is not a lot of time required, you can already plan at least two free times to practice, when you get up a few minutes earlier and also go to bed a few minutes earlier.

a) Detecting
If you want to concentrate your thoughts properly, you first need to detect your true wish. Find out what you actually want for yourself, what you want to achieve in life, what are the most important things for you in life. With these kind of questions you slowly but surely give directions to your thoughts and start to draw your mind-map consciously. Every person has different desires in different areas of life. However, it is recommended to concentrate on one after the other. Your thoughts shouldn’t be scattered over different areas, as then the brain activity cannot reach its full potential according to a particular topic. First be clear about what you want in different areas of life, but then try to achieve them one after the other, unless it is possible to combine them.

Schedule your free time to make sure that you can take enough time for yourself as required. How much time you need depends on the strength of your will. The strength of will holds your thoughts together and maintains your concentration. You should plan at least twenty minutes for your daily concentration practices.

Try to repeat these questions a few times a day. After a couple of days your brain will learn these questions and will automatically look for answers. You can be sure that you will find your answers. If you are sincerely addressing your inner knowledge, it never leaves you without an answer. The repetition has another advantageous point. Your brain will start to automatically prepare for the next concentration exercise already a couple of minutes before, so that your concentration will be ever easier to be maintained.

Before starting to gather your concentration, first of all try to get rid of your daily struggles. If you realize that there are issues troubling your mind very much, don’t loose time with ignoring them. First of all concentrate on them and ask yourself, why these things don’t want to leave you in peace. Troubling thoughts are nothing negative, they only wait for the right time to call attention to themselves. Your concentration practices are this kind of right time they are waiting for. Just make towards them and listen to your own complaints. These complaints can give you some really good ideas about what is going on in your inner world. So, don’t ignore them and listen to your own thoughts arousing from inside.

After your complaints are calmed down, you will start with a fresh and strong concentration. While you ask yourself questions about what you truly want in life and want for yourself, you will also take notice of these complaints, which aroused just a few moments ago. By concentrating first on troubling thoughts, you actually widen your inner perspective and become more alerted and sensitive to inner voices. Now there is nothing standing between you and your concentration practices. Take as much time as you need, in order to detect your real wish. Your true wishes always have the highest priority in your life, if you want it or not.

b) Visualizing
Once you detected your wish, now you can try to visualize the pictures in front of your inner eye. Try to see as much details as possible. While trying to see the pictures and symbols inside, make use of your feelings. Only go on with the next step, when you make sure that you have a clear idea of what your wish is. Ask yourself what kind of emotions you feel when thinking of this wish/ when looking at this picture or listening to this sound?

If you realized what you truly want and if you are really convinced that this is what you truly wish to achieve in your life, go now even a step further and feel it as if its totally real. Imagine that your wish has already come true and start to feel it in your reality. How does it feel?

Visualize all the activities you will do when your wish comes true and actively think that your wish has already come true. Enjoy the pictures which are floating in your mind and know that they are already real. It’s just a question of time, when these scenes appear in your reality. They are in your mind, so you can be sure that they are already in your life. Try to catch these pictures and feel all the emotions as real as they are.

Live the moment… KNOW that it is real… Enjoy this mental trip.

Be sure that soon or later but for sure these emotions, these activities and all these scenes will become true.

c) Formulating
When you have successfully experienced the emotions in the step of visualizing, move on to the next step. Here you need to give the pictures you’ve seen in your visions their particular names. You need to define your inner pictures, voices or symbols, so that they can be memorized next time easier. But especially naming is important for your thoughts to be identified again next time. This way you make sure that your concentration exercise will make an ever increasing progress.

Now, take your favorite scenes again in front of your inner eye. Visualize all detail as real and close as possible. At the very moment, when you feel most comfortable in a scene give it a very specific name. Repeat the name a few times and then let the sound of the name die away inside you and absorb it with all your body.

If you like you can invent some new words, or just use some word which you like the sound of. The meaning is not important, because you anyway give it a new meaning by this very procedure. So, take whatever you like. It might also be a sentence or maybe a sound. It’s only important that you can repeat it next time, when you need to remember this vision with all its feelings, pictures and sounds again.

Go through several pictures or scenes in your mind the same way and name them one after the other. Go on with this as long as you want. At the beginning we recommend not to formulate sentences/words for more than five scenes/pictures in your mind, as otherwise the effect loses its impact and you get confused.

Conclusion:
When you start to ask yourself question as in the first parts of the practice, this pumps electrical impulses and blood into very new regions of your brain. That way new areas of your brain are activated, which were not used before. You increase your brain capacity and use more of your ability. When you continue with naming your visions, you set the bases for your new thoughts. This ensures that your thoughts are not flying away or that they don’t remain unrealized. By giving your wishes and desires an identity by naming them, you create the foundation to manifest your thoughts.

bit.ly – Thoughts are not the self of the person; desire is. Perceiving Reality dissolves the question “How Can I Control My Thoughts?” into “How Can I Change What I Desire?”

Tags: Power, Thought
Posted in Thoughts | | No Comments »

Your standing the conference room with all your peers looking at you as your about to give your big presentation.  You were so confident that you were going to nail this, you’ve prepared for weeks.  Then you start thinking “I’m going to mess this up and fail big time”.  It is fair to say that people do have an inclination to think a certain way and have repetitive thoughts about events or situations that bring on anxiety.  The thoughts can be so repetitive that they mess up your ability to finish tasks, thus creating more anxiety and panic within us.  This type of thinking can become a terrible cycle that can be very difficult to undo. 

So how can people that suffer from repetitive anxious thoughts eliminate the intensity of the thought? 

1)      An anxious thought enters your mind and whatever the thought, the sequence of feelings is always the same.

The anxious thought comes in and you instantly react with fear. The fear you just felt sends a shock through your nervous system to the pit of your stomach. The reaction you’re having within your body makes you think of the thought over and over. The stronger the thoughts become the more your mind and body start to lose control completely.

2)      You start to question the thoughts, sometimes for an entire day.  The more you think about the thoughts the harder it seems for them to go away.

Why am I thinking about these thoughts? Why can’t I get this feeling to go away?

3)      How do you start to eliminate the unwanted anxious thoughts?

Don’t force the thoughts away, this is very important. Allow the thought to come in, the more comfortable you are with them the better. The thoughts will not go away fully, but you can change the way you react to them. When you become able to change your anxious thoughts the more free you become of them.

The most important thing to remember is everyone, and I mean everyone has anxious thoughts.  Most people as they have the anxious thought usually just think their just crazy thoughts and push them out of their mind immediately.  They see it for what it truly is a fleeting anxious thought and they just ignore it.  To people who have anxiety the anxious thought fuels out of control thoughts.  Choosing how to react to your anxious thoughts are key for reducing anxiety. 

Try to observe the thought you are having and then label it.  By labeling the thought you are calling out were the thought is coming from, as in fear.  Next, watch how the thought passes through your mind and don’t judge the thought just watch it.  Finally move your focus on to whatever you were doing when the thought came into your mind.

Anxious thoughts are hard to deal with especially for the already anxiety ridden person dealing with them.  Just like anything else in life it takes practice and patience with any new thing we learn, yes even techniques on reducing repetitive anxious thoughts.  If you would like to take a more in-depth look at these and other techniques you can follow this link http://anxietypanic.weebly.com.

Share your thoughts
Share your thoughts about this story on the Sentinel-Review website or our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/sentinelreview [...]
Read more on Woodstock Sentinel-Review

Tags: anxious, helping, reduce, repetitive, steps, Thoughts
Posted in Thoughts | | No Comments »