Where Thoughts Reside

A thought
It rests on routine, in actions, special places; even seasons, people, work, colors . . . everything
It is fed and nurtured when you pick it up
It grows as you kneed it in the mind



Did you know that your thoughts follow you wherever you go?

This may seem rather obvious, but rarely do we get to really look at our thoughts because we are drowning in them constantly.

We recently returned from a nearly two week visit to Brazil. While in a totally different country with none of my usual routines, my habitual thinking patterns became more obvious to me. It hit me like an off camber joke; how I had totally changed my surroundings but my thoughts were unnecessarily tagging along.

Rather than ignore or discard this observation, I decided to take the opportunity to see my thoughts from a new perspective- much like I support and encourage through my body-typing teaching in my book and talks.

What did I notice?

It's true. It's not your external circumstances that matter, but your thoughts about them. Changing your job, relationship status or car isn't the key to happiness.

This made such clear sense to me while in Brazil.

My thoughts and thought patterns where ingrained in my routines: washing, cleaning, cooking, organizing, exercising, choosing my clothes, friends, memories in furniture, dates, days of the week, pets, food . . . My thoughts were attached to EVERYTHING!

But oddly enough even when I tried to liberate myself from them by going outside my usual life, my thoughts followed me. My thoughts are not just in my head; they are strewn about waiting for me to pick them up again.

I was carrying them around dutifully. I don't need to pick them up and carry them with me.

Like software, thoughts are to serve an end purpose or to serve the hardware in improving itself. If left to run continuously, one program upon one another, the hardware gets over-burdened and does not work as efficiently.

Being out of my usual environment and roles for over a week really helped me to reset and recalibrate.

Keys to recalibrate:

Take some time, 10 minutes, 10 hours, or ten days if you can to get out of your usual routine. Notice which thoughts come up. Notice which ones don't.

When you go back to your usual routine which things pop out at you? Are you reminded to speed up, get anxious, saddened or feel another emotion that has often loomed over you? Be aware of them as you go back into your usual life.

Recognize that a thought only has as much power as you allow it to have.

For example: Does the shawl in you den that you kept in memory of your grandmother bring sadness and longing to you every time you see it? Do you want to have these feelings every time you see it? Probably not. The easy thing would be to completely remove it from the environment: like removing all sweets from the household when striving to eating in a more healthy manner. Since we often cannot simply remove other disturbing things from our life, a more effective and helpful strategy is to reframe how we think about such disturbing things. Do this with one or two things at a time until you get more practiced. When you see or experience something that disturbs you, think of the positive associated with that object or occurrence. Think of the wonderful, warm memories with grandma until that is the feeling that comes up when you see her shawl.


How you think is the most important factor in health.

Do a check up regularly- and make sure to talk with and associate with people you want to think like!