How-To-Change Thought Streams That Don’t Serve Our Best Interests
We’re all streaming content these days, whether it be a movie on our computer, a podcast on our phone, or the ideas streaming through our heads. We can choose the external content we want to focus on. But what about the streaming content inside? Do we allow streaming conversations of self-doubt, worry, anger or blame to play on and own us?
Streaming negative self-talk is often a constant source of personal energy drain. Let’s take a deeper look and explore some suggestions that can help us take charge.
Most of us are conscious of the whisper thoughts and feelings constantly running through our awareness – whether at home, at work, sleeping, or riding in an Uber. Most of these thoughts move through quickly if we don’t feed them, yet occasionally a “downer” thought will snag our focus and begin to loop and grow in feeling. Downer thoughts can crash the effectiveness of a whole day or longer once they expand into anger, harsh judgments, hurt feelings, or guilt for feeling that way. Downer projections especially, can own us for hours and it’s humorous how we can be aware of this yet can’t seem to do much to manage it. (That is, until from our heart, we decide that we can.)
Renewing Heart Qualities Can Help Us Take Charge
On the positive side, some whisper thoughts and feelings renew us and support us being our best. We can benefit by creating a conscious habit of noticing and energizing renewing thoughts and feelings. It’s also helpful to take some time each day to engage in higher vibrational thoughts and actions, such as kindness, gratitude, compassion, helping others, etc. These uplifting heart qualities help to offset the stress accumulation from thought loops and feelings that drain our energy and strain our ability to reason and make comfortable choices.
So much is happening in shorter durations of time these days that our mind and emotions easily get overloaded. This often triggers anxiety, worry and fear projections. It’s helpful to practice shifting feelings of worry or fear into the attitude of managed concern. Managed concern is an emotionally balanced state of concern that connects us with a clearer view and effective reasoning. Worry and fear tend to overpower our access to effective reasoning and perception. They especially dim our heart’s intuitive suggestions and solutions, which can be critical at times. Excessive worry is one of the stealthiest ways we sabotage our well-being, and then we worry more because we can’t figure out what caused the problem.
How to Practice Managed Concern
Practice identifying some of your worries that stir fear or anxiety, then experiment with shifting them into the attitude of managed concern. The attitude of experimenting is a lighter approach which results in less self-judgment of your performance. Practice first with smaller issues to build your confidence. Before each practice, review the benefits of managed concern (intelligent concern) compared to the energy drain from excessive worry. Soon it will become an automatic reflex to make an attitude adjustment when you sense looping feelings and perceptions that destabilize your well-being.
Practicing managed concern along with engaging in renewing heart qualities, such as kindness, patience and compassion with ourselves and others can make a big difference in the vibrational quality of our day-to-day experience. We can feel under pressure at times, but eventually this presses us to finally realize that we have more power, in most cases, over how we choose to think, feel and respond to situations. We can take charge of streaming internal content once our heart’s commitment supports our mind’s intention. Positive results will follow genuine efforts. It’s up to each of us.
