Update:Please click on this link for more information about The new Mind Alchemy course . All the links to the downloads have now been removed. I would like to thank all 800+ readers who expressed an interest in this course and for everyone who completed the course the first time round, it is becasue of you I could make the course better.
Before we start
A few readers are now blogging about their experiences on the course, and it would be great to lend your support:
Stacy Claflin – Grow With Stacy
Marty BoneIdol – Living Life in Chapters
Stephen – New Life Starts Here
Read the interview I have done with Angela Artemis from Powered by Intuition
Read the interview I have done with Sandi Faviell from DevaCoaching
Watch an interview I made with Suzie Cheel on Mind Alchemy
Mind Alchemy Day 7
Welcome to day 7 of Mind Alchemy.
We're going to continue with the mind workout, before taking a relatively restful and fun day on day 8.
Daily routine "“ if you haven't done so already take 10-15 minutes to go over your outcomes. Remember this forms a part of your daily routine and the quicker you get into the habit the quicker your life will change.
The Nature of your thoughts
90% of what you were thinking yesterday will be the same thoughts you think today.
Today I would like to talk about the nature of our thoughts and how we go about changing our thoughts.
Over the last 6 days you've seen how to inject new thoughts into your mind, thoughts that will have a viral effect and start you on the path of thinking about what you want in your life. You can't have two thoughts at the same time, actually you can have two thoughts at the same time but you can't focus on two thoughts at the same time, so the more you focus on what you want in your life the less wasteful thoughts you will have.
Your prodigal thoughts
According to some scientists we have around 60,000 thoughts per day, and 95%-98% of those thoughts are the same ones day in and day out, or rather the same types of thoughts. Let's do some math here:
95% of 60,000 = 57,000
57,000 thoughts that were the same as, or the same type as yesterday. We can guestimate that we can take about 10,000 of those thoughts to think about getting up in the morning, planning our day ahead, driving to school/work, practical thinking about issues at work/home etc etc – these are practical thoughts that we have to think about day in and day out.
So we are left with around 47,000 thoughts. That's 47,000 spare thoughts, thoughts that are up for grabs and to be turned into something useful. What do you think these thoughts are about?
Here's are some classifications of the 47,000 thoughts we have:
Worry, boredom, daydreaming, future planning, catastrophising, fighting in our minds, negative self talk, positive self talk, what others think of us, and so on.
How many of the 47,000 spare thoughts that we have each day do we think positively about the future, or plan positively for the future, or ask the right questions to get a better future. I am willing to guess not very many at all.
Our minds are in constant battle with useless worry (not all worry is bad if you do something with it), other people inside our heads, self pity, self deprication, negative thinking, despair, doom and gloom. Very few of us have risen above this constant barrage. It is fueled by you, but it is also fueled by the media, television, newspapers, and radio telling us day in and day out that the world is a shit place to live. Do you know what, the world is not a shit place to live. Yes there are others who get murdered, yes there is war, yes there are terrible people out there, but the amount of media stories about the bad events in the world is totally disproportionate to the population as a whole. We do not live in an evil world, we live in a world inhabited by SOME evil people.
One of the best things you can do to cleanse your mind is to stop reading the newspapers, stop listening to the news, turn news 24 off, turn radio news off. There is nothing we can do about most of the news we hear so why let it infect our minds.
Okay, back to the topic at hand here. What can we do with these spare 47,000 thoughts and how do we make sure the 47,000 thoughts are useful?
Management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organization
Sun Tzu
Replace, Stop and Redirection
At the moment a lot of our thoughts are based on a stimulus from our physical world. We are going to look at changing the 47,000 spare thoughts we have and turning them around in order to help us.
Replace
We are going to inject more of the outcome focused thoughts you learned in the previous 6 days of the course. This way you will be having more outcome focused thoughts, which lead to more outcome solution oriented thoughts, which leads to taking more action.
Stop
We can't stop thinking altogether, but what we can do is stop some of the thoughts that we do not want from entering our minds. The way to do this is through relaxation, meditation, guided mediation, and focused thinking, which we will be looking at later on in the course.
Redirection
Whenever we catch ourselves thinking things we don't want to think we turn it around in the opposite direction. For example:
"I can't afford to put my daughter through college" we turn it around and think
"How can I find a way to put my daughter through college"
You see the difference here. The first thought leads to more doom and gloom thoughts and feelings of despair, whereas the second thought leads to more solution oriented thoughts, more positive and more likely to find a solution to the issue at hand.
Exercise for the day – Unedited writing of thoughts
Todays exercise is all about unedited recording of our worries and thoughts.
You can download the Mind Alchemy workshee t or take a blank piece of paper and start writing.
I read a post last month from a great guy called Amit Sodha about unedited writing of your thoughts which is something Amit came across on his own without realising there was a name for it called Freewriting. Anyways I discovered it through Amit and want to pass it on to you as an exercise today.
Get a pen, a piece of paper, what we are going to do is for 30 minutes start writing down every single thought we have and focus on what we are worried about, but also let any thought you have come out on paper, so if a worry thought leads to another thought let it flow. Alternatively if you are a relatively fast at typing you could open up a word document and start typing away every thought that comes into your head. The trick here is to not think too much about what you are writing just let it flow.
I think you will find this exercise pretty amazing as it throws up some interesting observations about the way our minds work
Tomorrow
Tomorrow we will be having a little fun with a great exercise to help keep your motivation high. Until tomorrow my fellow Mind Alchemists"¦"¦..
Action follows a thought"¦
This course is about taking action, and to become pro active in changing your life. Take time to do this exercise and really think about it throughout the day. You don't need to wait until tomorrow to take steps to improve your "˜Wheel of Life', but with the support and encouragement from all the members we can help each other and support each other, but ultimately "˜you have to bring something to the table!'
Your thoughts
As always it's good to talk about your experiences and share it with the rest of the members of the course, so let us know how this exercise went for you and if you gained any insights or had any revelations about yourself or your life.
You can share your thoughts at Mind Alchemy Facebook Group
You can Tweet using the hashtag #MindAlchemy
Or of course you can leave a comment below.
Some Amazing Comments
Comments
