Last Sunday I got into a fight

I was driving home from a weekend away.

When some stranger cut me off.

Instead of breaking, I drove straight into the back of him.

He got out of his car and started shouting at me.

I got out too and he immediately tried to punch me.

Luckily I’m a white belt in Jiu Jitsu…

So I ducked, tackled him to the ground and got him in a rear naked choke.

Suddenly I came back to reality.

The car was in front of me, intact.

But my heart was pumping, my adrenaline was high.

And my knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel.

Although none of this actually took place.

The feelings I had experienced were very real.

Yet the instant I “woke up” from this daydream,

I stopped giving meaning to these thoughts.

Then my feelings disappeared and my mind went to another thought.

For me this experience confirmed that the quality of our thinking determines the quality of our experiences.

And that we are always just one thought away from a completely different experience.

But unfortunately we don’t always control the thoughts that pop up in our head...

What we do control however is the meaning we assign to them.

And the less meaning we assign to our thoughts, the more space there is for other thoughts to replace them.

So next time you are feeling stressed, anxious or worried about something.

Remind yourself that it’s just a thought.

It doesn’t mean anything about you, it doesn’t mean you have to do anything and it definitely doesn’t define you.

It’s just a thought.

The quicker you realise this, the easier it will be for another thought to replace it.

This has been a real game changer for me and I hope it can be for you too.

“We think we are experiencing the world, but in reality we are experiencing our thinking” - Michael Neill

On a scale of 0-10, how would you rate the quality of your thinking?


#thinking #thoughts #personaldevelopment #motivation #whatinspiresme