Tag Archive for 'thoughts'

A lesson in attitude

I read a beautiful little story today. It doesn’t say who the author were as many of these moral teachings often are without. Not rarely these text are retold old text from Buddhist or old Sufi teachings. But it would be nice to know where it came from. So if someone has information on the author then please say.

But then again, isn’t it possible that this were an actual tale from an old peoples home, or couldn’t it?

Happiness“The 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.

After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window.

“I love it,” she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

“Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room …. just wait.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged.. it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it … “It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.

Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away … just for this time in my life.

Old age is like a bank account … you withdraw from what you’ve put in .. So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories. Thank you for your part in filling my Memory bank. I am still depositing.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

Free your heart from hatred.
Free your mind from worries.
Live simply.
Give more.
Expect less.”

Good story and good advices don’t you think.

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Working with the negative mind

A friend approached me the other day and expressed anxiety about the difficulties of becoming free of the constant stream of negative thoughts in the mind.

We all know that there are a constant ongoing thought process where negative thoughts get repeated over and over again. It’s mainly the same sad unproductive thoughts telling you that whatever you are is of no value, or that you won’t succeed in anything that you want to do.
The mind can be very cruel in this way. Sometimes it might even seem as if the mind is your own enemy, constantly trying to keep you on the ground, preventing you from standing up.

There is no doubt that an uncontrolled mind can hurt you. Or as the Buddha said in the Dhammapada:

Your worst enemy cannot harm you
As much as your own thoughts, unguarded.

The mind is Change. Everything that the mind is, is what is around it. If the world around the mind changes, then naturally the mind changes also. No wonder that we feel that the mind seems to work against us rather then with us. If the mind is so easily influenced by whatever it focuses on, then naturally there are many pains and worries that you will face if you identify with your mind. Continue reading ‘Working with the negative mind’

The mind is a flickery thing

How do they come up with these things? Science is a funny thing.

According to Charlie Greer “the National Science Foundation put out
some very interesting statistics (…) the average person thinks about
twelve thousand thoughts per day. A deeper thinker (…) puts forth
fifty thousand thoughts daily.
” [source]

Have you ever counted your own thoughts, started to put labels on them? That’s one about cars, and there’s another about mortgage plans, oh that’s the one about fears again.. That last one just doesn’t seem to go away.

You’ve never counted them? Well, neither have I. But I have realized time and time again that most thoughts are just reruns and repetitions of old thoughts. The most frequent thoughts that come up are mostly the same every day.

It can be a tricky thing to change old thought patterns. Continue reading ‘The mind is a flickery thing’