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Do you ever find yourself caught up in an unpleasant daydream? Perhaps thinking through an imaginary fight with a coworker. Maybe fantasizing about revenge or the downfall of your enemies. When you are cognizant that your mind is somewhere else, ask yourself if these thoughts are life-affirming. Are they aligned with your true self? Are you planning ways to bring joy to the world? Or are you thinking about how convenient it would be if a tornado happened to take out the house of someone plotting against you? Maybe the tornado visited your enemy’s house because you invented a tornado-controlling machine….
I have days when I find myself thinking unhelpful things at least once every five minutes. That means that much of the day I’m not really here, experiencing and enjoying life; I’m in an imaginary world of future or past conflict. At those moments, I interrupt my thoughts to bring myself back to reality.
The way I do this is by realizing that I am not my thoughts and feelings. The real me, my higher self, is the one aware of those thoughts and feelings. So, when I picture myself in a place of fear or discomfort, I think, I am aware of those thoughts and feelings. And then I do something even more meta: I think, I am aware that I am aware of those thoughts and feelings. These two steps really bring me out of the uncomfortable daydream and back to what’s real, here and now.
