We believe the stories we tell ourselves

IDENTIFICATION WITH MIND.

If you were to ask yourself "who am I?", how would you answer? Perhaps you'd say you are a mother, father, sister, brother. Or describe yourself with the career you have. Or your occupation. Or perhaps your most noticeable or prevalent characteristics: I'm a kind, generous, friendly, sunny person.

Likewise, maybe you already have a story in your head about meditation. You might think it's superfragilisticexpialidocious. ;) Or you might be telling yourself that you are no good at it, or feel irritated by it. Or maybe you're still working out how you feel about it, and feel neutral about it all.

We identify strongly with our mind but thought are perceptions, not universal truths.

Our mind develops stories. And we believe them. We believe everything our mind tells us, right? If we experience a feeling of anxiety, it is our mind which tells us we are feeling anxious, so we believe that anxiety is us. If our mind tells us so, it must be true. Or else we are living in denial. Isn't that so?

With our mindfulness practice, we don’t sweep our feelings or experiences under the carpet. We simply learn to look at them in a different way.

When we pay attention to our mind-stream – our self-talk – we might notice that a large part of the time our mind is in the past or the future – and busy with things that are not actually very useful.

While it's true that we experience each of our thoughts, they don't always represent what's true about the world. Most of the time, our thoughts are just a story we tell ourself to make sense of the world. It's all based on our interpretation of the world around us.

Meditation helps us to discover our mind. What it is, how it works, what it is thinking. By discovery I mean we become familiar with our mind. But without being critical or judgmental. We discover what emotions are present, what are our thoughts and beliefs? What do we feel? And why do we feel this way?

Mindfulness meditation is training. We learn to recognise our buttons, our patterns, our habits, and we train our mind to become more still, less critical, less reactive.

Many types of thoughts prevent you from living your best life.

For example…

• Fearful thoughts narrow your thinking and prevent you from taking action.

• Stressful thoughts create discomfort in the present moment.

• Anxious thoughts create unpleasant feelings about the future.

• Distracting thoughts pull your attention away from things that matter to you.

We can’t always control when these thoughts will surface. But we can develop strategies for responding to them in a way that doesn’t bring you down.

So the lesson for today is: we don’t HAVE to believe or follow our mind. The fundamental truth that gives you these powers is that your thoughts are not always true, so you don’t have to believe them. We meditate to transform our minds, the way we deal with thinking. We are the product of our thoughts. What we think, we become. THOUGHTS become WORDS become ACTIONS become HABITS become CHARACTER becomes DESTINY