It has been a while since I made a post and the reason was that I was trying to focus on kicking my habit of drinking and smoking. Guess what? I did it and I am sober for five and half months as I am writing this blog. Just wanted to appreciate myself a bit and a small pat for achieving something that I thought, I would never achieve in this life time.
Let’s get down to the topic of this blog. I have been observing myself to understand why I do certain things even though my intention was not to do those things. After deep analysis, I came to understand that there are some underlying forces within the root of us dictating our behavior. These forces may have taken deep root within us during our childhood or in situations where the environment handed over these beliefs and perceptions in the process of our growing up. Now, that I understood this, the real struggle was to dismantle these clinging beliefs within me.
How easy it would really be, to just tell the brain to do the right thing when we know that, what we were doing is wrong. This is not the way our brain or mind works. They have been trained in a certain way for a long time and it would take some time to untrain those beliefs and retrain with new perceptions or beliefs. I can give a good example of how our unconscious forces get us off track. If by nature we delve on negative things in life, nobody else is to be blamed except for our own selves.
Here is a good example... I started the day with good thoughts and with a happy perspective just like a cool breeze on a sea shore. In the middle of the day at work, my mind suddenly was drifting away on some negative circumstances that had occurred in my life. Immediately, I could sense the negative emotions taking toll on my body, there was a tensed feeling in my gut and my calf muscles were feeling the pressure. Finally, I was above to get mad and the next thought was to get up and go for a smoke. Did I go for a smoke, no way!!! I just said wait a minute and asked myself this question, "I was in peace all this time and what happened?” The answer was the "thought", so I just focussed on re-adjusting my thought pattern and went out for a walk and it was gone. Tracing back to what happened, a bad thought provoked a bad emotion and in turn a bad feeling and finally a bad reaction or negative act of angst. Wow! Did I just invent that? No, people have been doing this kind of stuff for years, but I can say it was my own inner awakening. People do have moments of their own when they realize certain things.. Huh!
Another good example of the unconscious thought pattern is...., I was in total distress one day and I was driving to a Cafe to have breakfast. The specific route I was driving is the same route I go to the Gym. There is one place where you turn left to the Gym and right to the Cafe. When I started from home, my intention was to go for breakfast with a mental cloud of distress. When I reached the point where I had to take right to the Cafe, I took the left towards the Gym. Suddenly, I recovered from my unconscious state of mind with a silly smile.
Brain is a muscle and just like any other part of the body, it needs to be trained and exercised. Researches have shown that the more active our brains are, it can prevent Alzheimer's and Schizophrenia diseases. When we start living more consciously focusing on the present moment, there is more probability to live a peaceful and contended life. But it is the nature of the mind to always focus on the past or the future. Trying to balance the thoughts and stay focused on the present moment is a real challenge.
