In this episode, we talk about planting mental seeds vs mental weeds. I'll show you three simple techniques to help you when your automatic negative thoughts creep into your mind.
Transcripts
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Imagine if you had a vegetable garden and were growing tomatoes, carrots,
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zucchini, and other delicious fruits and vegetables, then just as your plants
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started to show signs of life, you jump in there and start planting some weeds.
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Yep.
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I said, weeds, the results wouldn't be great, but this is
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exactly what we do in our minds.
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We spend time cultivating a sense of calm and productivity with meditation
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and all these apps that we have.
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Then we throw in some mental weeds today.
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I'm gonna be talking to you about how to keep your mind free of these mental weeds
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and negative and destructive thought.
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I'm amid Ahmed and welcome to be.
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Well do well.
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So before we get started, I'd like to discuss a little bit about why
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we even have negative thoughts.
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You need to know that this is completely natural.
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It's human, and we all have, what's referred to in Buddhism as a monkey mind,
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we have a monkey mind inside all of us.
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This monkey mind jumps around and gets distracted and usually doesn't really
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have any control until we do things that help us get into control like meditation.
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So the first point I wanna discuss is that meditation itself is a really, really
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powerful way to be able to control your mind and to be able to calm those negative
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thoughts and those destructive thoughts.
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Meditation doesn't have to be you sitting in a Lotus position on a meditation pillow
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or out in a field by yourself for hours.
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Meditation can be just you sitting in your car after you drop your kids off to
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school, , just sit for a few minutes in silence and just observe your thought.
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one thing that a lot of people think is that meditation is to calm your
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mind and to control your thoughts.
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In fact, it's the opposite where meditation allows you to get
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in control of your thoughts.
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I've got a number of apps that I use for meditating.
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I've tried Headspace in the past right now, we're using an app called
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calm and they have daily meditations.
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And they're really, really good.
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I'm not being endorsed to say this, but calm is , definitely
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one of my favorite apps.
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Another one that I really enjoy is called smiling mind.
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Calm has a subscription cost to it.
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Whereas smiling mind is entirely free and smiling mind has meditations for
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different kinds of professionals.
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If you're a teacher or a first responder or an entrepreneur, they have
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different meditations for those as well.
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The second way to get rid of these negative thoughts is to
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actually ignore them and just reframe the way you see things.
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So for example imagine you're driving down the highway and everything is fine.
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And there's traffic flowing in both directions, everything seems okay.
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And then somebody cuts you off in traffic abruptly.
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Now you're probably gonna get quite upset and aggravated about it.
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So one option is for you to get angry and to respond.
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Maybe show them a finger or do, or the other option is to reframe it.
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You could either think that this person was just being rude and cut
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you off and being inconsiderate or the alternative is maybe they had a baby in
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the backseat and the baby was choking.
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And the person, the mom maybe had to quickly get into the shoulder
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lane and in doing so cut you off.
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Now, when you think of the ladder and you think of somebody cutting
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you off and you get upset about it.
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Well, if you knew that it was because the person didn't have a choice
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or they were trying to save their baby, you probably wouldn't get as.
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so here's an exercise next time you feel these negative thoughts coming on,
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what you can do is you can actually make up a silly and ideally compassionate
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story about why that happened.
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If you have a child that's vying for your attention while you're trying to
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work, rather than getting upset, you can make up a story about what it is.
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Maybe they drop something on their toe and they are in pain, or
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maybe something happened at school.
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And they're just embarrassed to tell you, and they're just looking for a.
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so when something comes up and you feel these negative thoughts, try
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to make up another story about why that could have happened, that may
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assist you in not feeling so negative.
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The third and final idea is to actually spend time with people
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that are just really positive.
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You know, there's those people out there that are just extremely
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optimistic and it's really hard for anything to bother them.
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A quick story here, we were looking for a bite to eat for lunch and our
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kids love to have McDonald's fries.
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And so we went to McDonald's and we are in a new city.
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We're traveling.
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We, didn't speak the language.
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And when we got to the front hill, we ordered.
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We ended up getting our order back, but it was incorrect.
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There were some wrong items in our order and they missed a few things.
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Well, there was a big lineup of people behind me and the guys
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that were working at the counter actually were really, really calm.
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And I was actually really impressed that they had such composure, even
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with all these people yelling at them lights, the sounds beeping around them.
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They just maintained their composure.
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It was really quite impressive.
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So 0.3 is to spend time.
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People that are extremely optimistic, positive.
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And also I should mention calm.
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Now here's a quick little challenge for you.
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Meditating has made a huge difference in my life.
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I've been meditating now for, I think about 250 days consecutively without
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stopping many, many days before that, but 250 days now without missing a single day.
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So my challenge to you is to pick a time either morning or evening, and set a timer
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on your watch or your phone for three.
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And during that three minutes, you're just gonna sit close your
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eyes and just observe no need to try any fancy meditation techniques.
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No need to sit in a lot.
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Disposition.
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Hands can be on your lap.
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Just sit comfortably.
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Comfort is key.
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So, what I want you to do is pick time either morning or afternoon or evening,
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and just three minutes of meditation this week, seven days straight.
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If you are successful, I think you'll notice a big
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change if you're unsuccessful.
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Well, there's no failure.
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It's only you either succeed or you learn.
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So notice what didn't work.
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Well, maybe it was the timing.
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Wasn't right.
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Maybe you didn't have the same time set every day of the week.
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But try three minutes a day this week for the next seven days.
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And I'd love to hear how your experience was.
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Send me a quick message.
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So to recap, here are the three things that you can do to prevent
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mental weeds and destructive thoughts from taking over your mind.
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Number one, like I mentioned is meditation.
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Number two is make up a story, a compassionate story about why
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something happened that upset you.
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And number three is surround yourself with really positive people.
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Now, if you can't find positive people around you immediately
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watch a really funny movie.
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One of my favorite movies is life is beautiful.
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And in that movie, there is some serious.
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Serious positivity.
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So I think you're gonna enjoy that in tomorrow's episode,
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I'm going to be talking about revenge, bedtime, procrastination.
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This probably explains why you feel tired all the time, and I'm gonna share some
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tips and tricks as to how you can overcome revenge, bedtime, procrastination.
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I hope this has been helpful, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
