Experience Your Highest Potential and Best Life
We all have background mind chatter — incessant thoughts that don’t stop churning in our heads at all times of the day. It’s an endless non-stop loop of negative repetitive thinking. Until we quiet mind chatter, the hope for a decent positive idea or productive thought is minimal. Our internal chatter spins off into useless criticisms, judgments, self hate, doubt, fears, anxiety and on and on.
These sorts of beliefs, stories, and meanings become “patterns” that repeat themselves and are extremely harmful and debilitating, difficult to overcome, and challenging, if not impossible, to quiet. Our cluttered, noisy minds leave very little room for a state of calm, peace of mind, and new ways of thinking and being.
If you’re looking to find out why this chatter leaves you feeling separate, frustrated, exhausted, and at odds with life, and discover ways to quiet your mind and limit mind chatter, then read on.
Dualism is a Big Mistake
Your constant mind chatter makes you believe there’s a separate self, separate from the world around you. In reality, however, that’s not the case. There’s no separate self! You start to feel the world is a dualistic one. Dualism entails a “you vs. them” attitude. It keeps you separate from the world and others.
The more you identify with duality, the more you live in separation and lack. You compare yourself to others, and categorize things into opposites, like good and bad or love and hate. By living in a constant state of comparison, you feel everyone has it better than you, and life is happening to you, rather than for you.
The Stories We Like to Tell
Our life is a reflection of the stories we tell ourselves. These stories were given to us as children by well-meaning parents, teachers, coaches, clergy, siblings, and other family members. And we adopted them hook, line, and sinker.
Our stories become our lives and our lives become these stories. We become stuck in the familiarity of a particular story and then re-tell it at every chance we get in order to unconsciously reinforce the validity of the story. It becomes The Story of You!
However, these stories are all created in our mind. By quieting your mind, which I’ll tell you more about later, you’ll feel a huge weight has been lifted and a space appears in which you can choose to consciously create a new, much more empowering story.
It’s Your Life
Your chattering mind would have you believe there’s a future moment in which you’ll have the life you really want and everything will be perfect...then, not now! But by not anchoring yourself to the life you have right here, right now in this present moment, you become like a feather in the wind.
You spend your time blowing here and there, based on random reactive thinking, the whims of others, and your external circumstances. It’s as if you’re waiting for your life to be solved for you by some outside force, some wise wizard to step in and magically make the life you really want appear.
You might end up waiting your entire life for that future moment! For your external circumstances to be just right. You’ve given up your power and freedom to the whims of chance.
When you stop long enough to deliberately choose to produce the results you want, you become the creator of your own destiny...right here, right now!
The Unity of it All
As your mind gets quieter, you’re able to grasp the fact that we’re all one, that we’re all interconnected. You start to feel a shift. This shift triggers momentum, which brings more and more of what you intentionally invite into your life.
When fully embraced, this feeling of unity and connection, will create a feeling of wholeness within you, a feeling that fulfills your inner being.
Feeling complete can lead to fewer desires — not to be confused with acquiescence — but rather an understanding that we’re already complete. We thus want for less. This feeling of oneness will lead to inner peace, satisfaction, and joy.
Looking for Love
Your mind spends a lot of time focusing on what’s lacking, what’s missing, and making you feel something is wrong. Something is wrong with the moment and something is wrong with you.
If you’re searching for a partner, for instance, and you’ve put all your focus on the present “lack” of a partner, your focus of “lack” will only attract more lack. Instead, try focusing on an inner love for yourself, a complete non-judgmental love that fills your entire inner being.
Next, try visualizing exactly what sort of partner you would like. Make a list of their qualities, emphasizing all of the points that make you smile.
Then spend your daydreaming time focusing on gratitude — be it for the little things like a roof over your head, the blooming of a flower, a soft pillow under your head. This constant reminder of gratitude has a way of keeping you harnessed to a connection with love, which can ultimately reinforce a feeling of unity.
You may end up feeling like you’re already complete, which is what you are — without a partner. This innermost feeling of completeness is real and magnificent. You are thus connected to a relationship with your inner being. This relationship is based on love, strength and companionship with yourself, rather than depending on an outer source.
What’s hard to wrap our heads around is the fact that often, once we let go of needing a partner, he or she will appear. It’s through this letting go of lack that abundance can flourish!
Practice Gratitude
Your Happiness, hence, can only come from within and when we’re able to thoroughly understand this, we can let go of lack. Looked at in reverse, the more we focus on lack, the more we attract that lack into our lives.
If we discuss it with friends or Google others who are experiencing similar situations, we concentrate our energies on this so-called lack. And the more we focus on lack, the more lack appears — because it's in focus, it takes center stage.
By practicing gratitude (even in small doses throughout the day) and developing a non-judgmental love for ourselves, we find ways to feel complete — without “needing” anything. It’s a state of satisfaction that cannot be fulfilled by any “thing” or “person.”
By finding this love relationship with ourselves, with our inner being, we let go of need and we understand that we can generate our own emotions from within.
Happiness is Within
One of the themes of your constant mind chatter is that this moment isn’t enough and you’re not enough! That kind of chatter won’t have you being too happy! Quite frankly, this only leaves you feeling frustrated and at odds with your own life.
Your noisy mind would have you believe you’re at the effect of your circumstances, and at the whim of external forces. That you have nothing to say about it. But I’m here to tell you, this is an inside job! Your deeply held beliefs create your world.
The Kybalion is an ancient text that says, “As above so below.”
The external world you see is a direct reflection of your internal world. Your life isn’t based on what you’re doing. It’s based on the ways you’re being.
So who are you being on the inside?!
Happiness is nothing more than Being Happy...on the inside. You generate your own emotions from within.
So, decide to be happy, today!
Experiencing the Shift
When you shift the context in your never satisfied mind from always seeking satisfaction to being satisfied, you activate a shift in your reality.
When you let go of needing, and experience a satisfaction in being, in appreciating what is, gratitude starts to show up. As you appreciate things more and more, gratitude starts to show up more and more. It’s like a snowball effect...first just smile to yourself, then smile and extend kindness to others, and all of a sudden kindness and opportunities are returned.
By practicing gratitude (even in small doses throughout the day) and a non-judgmental love for yourself, you’ll feel complete — without “needing” anything. It’s a state of satisfaction that cannot be fulfilled by any “thing” or “person.”
This is a simple process, but one must be forewarned that in trying too hard (thinking too hard, trying to jumpstart positivity by “faking it”), one might simply invite more difficulty and anxiety.
Instead, by working slowly and being grateful for things, you’ll access a state of satisfaction rather than being lost in your busy, noisy, mind.
Peace of Mind!
Just so you know, there’s actually a term for this constant mind chatter. It’s called the “Default Mode Network” and it’s been found to be greatly decreased through meditation.
If you’d like to read more about the idea of loosening your attachment to your mind and quieting its noisy state, have a look at this post: “Meditation: You Don’t Need to be a Buddhist Monk to Enjoy its Benefits.”
3 Ways to Quiet Mind Chatter
1) Establish a daily 10-minute meditation practice, preferably first thing in the morning before any screen time.
For those of you just starting out, here are my Top 5 Pointers to make it easy for you to get the most out of it…
- Pick a spot where you won’t be distracted or interrupted, for just 5 minutes to start… not longer. Sit in a regular chair that’s comfortable. There’s no need for special meditation benches and cushions. Just be comfortable and close your eyes.
- Start by focusing on your breath. It’s readily available and easy to do. Just watch it go in and out, in and out, in and out.
- Let go of strategizing, analyzing, planning, organizing, solving problems and struggling with things in your head. They’ll all still be there later!
- Do Not get into a battle with your mind. You’re not trying to stop your thinking. All you’re trying to do at first is not get so involved with your thoughts. Just notice them without having to assign any meaning to them or get involved in them. Let them drift away like clouds in the sky.
- If you get distracted and find yourself lost in a thought, do not blame yourself or find fault. Just go back to following your breath in and out, in and out, in and out.
If you do this a couple of days in a row, you’ll find it gets easier and easier and you’ll come away feeling way more relaxed, peaceful, and in touch with the present moment!
Over time, the benefits are many reflected in a greater sense of well being, more intimate relationships, better health, and a deeper connection to a place inside you that’s at peace with how things are in your life.
2) Every hour, try to find just one thing for which you’re grateful. These can be the simplest of things: the sound of the wind in the trees, the kindness someone extended to you, the tranquility of seeing your dog fast asleep, the laughter you were gifted with...simple things you’re surrounded by daily.
3) Once a day, try to notice something new in your surroundings: the way the light falls across the grass, a long afternoon shadow in your living room, a new flower that just bloomed, a new neighbor that just moved in, etc. These new insights will immediately connect you to the present moment. By connecting to the peaceful present and not being busy in your mind regretting the past or worrying about the future, your chattering monkey mind will fade away.
To learn more, download my Free Ebook “3 Steps to Feel Great Right Now Regardless of Your Circumstances.” Get started mastering your mind and transforming your thinking.
