The greatest positive attitude is the attitude of gratitude. The core nature of our mind is that of gratitude. As little babies, all of us were always in our place of joy and gratitude within. Our home within is our happy place and the energy of gratitude is available in limitless quantities there. We have simply got lost and forgotten our way back home to the grounded place within us. How did we get lost and where did we get lost? We got lost in our thinking mind by getting engaged with the non-stop mental activity in it.
The following article explains this.
Self_Love_Respect ·
1y
Is it normal to experience uncontrollable self-talk?
If you define normal as something that happens with the majority of the people living on this planet, then yes, it is normal to experience uncontrollable self-talk. But if you ask whether it is good for you to experience this condition, I would say, no. In self-talk, who is talking to who? Self-talk means you are talking to yourself. But you need someone to be talking to, isn’t it? Self talk is usually the voice in your mind playing out. It is as if a recorded audio is on auto play in the mind. Whose voice? The voices of all the people in your life, the society around you, telling you constantly what to do and what not to do. It could be negative or it could be positive. If you successfully distract your mind from this activity, it would end up doing something else in the mind. These include the dialogues we carry out mentally with an imaginary person, memories of past events, worries about the future, planning, working, calculating, computing, watching something (video), listening something (audio such as podcasts), reading, studying, focusing, concentrating, paying attention, fantasising, imagining, dreaming, etc. We are habituated to this and so it seems to be happening effortlessly and automatically although we are doing it. Our mind gets tired of this constant uncontrollable, unstoppable habit and wants to rest. It actually gets exhausted. We easily know when our physical body is exhausted and we rest it by sitting down or lying down or taking a nap or long sleep or having a hot bath or a nice massage. But we have no metric or measure to find out when our mind is tired and we have no means to allow our mind to rest because any of the above resting that we give our physical body doesn’t rest the mind. Mental exhaustion shows up in the form of the following: Stress, worrying, indecisiveness, feeling restless, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, burnout, insomnia, impatience, constant irritation, etc. If you are feeling any of these it indicates your mind is tired and no amount of sleeping will be enough to make this mental tiredness go away. Long term mental exhaustion is the root cause for all the chronic life-style diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, etc. Positive self-talk is not an answer to this. It doesn’t help because the mind is already tired and we end up doing something more with the mind so it is neither effective nor does it give rest. I have written extensively in my Quora posts and previous answers about how to enjoy a quiet mind and allow our mind to completely rest and be rejuvenated. Please browse through and read a few of them if you are interested to begin controlling the uncontrollable self-talk.
Simply pause for a minute and practice with the following experiment and see how you feel.
Selvan Srinivasan · 1y
What are some breathing exercises for beginners who struggle with focusing on their breath while meditating?
Do this for just three minutes and see if it helps. Sit on a straight back chair with feet flat on the floor, the entire soles of the feet from tips of the toes to the heels firmly contacting the floor. Keep your back erect, you may place a cushion behind your back for support if required but do not lean back on an inclined backrest of the chair. Let your head be held straight, neck straight, shoulders square and relaxed. You may tilt the head very slightly downward to gaze at a point on the floor in front of you a few feet away from you. Keep your eyes fixed on that spot for the three minutes without moving your eyeballs. Allow your eyes to be half open and half closed and hold that spot in a gentle gaze and not a stare. You are not looking there to see something but simply holding that spot in a gentle gaze. Exhale with a loud sigh from your mouth and use gentle effort to empty your lungs as far as possible without straining too much. Then relax your body and allow the inhale to happen effortlessly and soundlessly through your nostrils. When you sense that the inhale is over, do not put any further effort to breathe in but repeat the exhale from the mouth with the sound and gentle effort. I call this conscious breathing. Effort only for the out breaths and allowing in breaths to happen effortlessly. This entire process is called FGCB or fixed gazing with conscious breathing. You may set hourly reminder alerts on your smartphone and repeat this 3 minute FGCB every hour throughout the day today and see how it helps with calming your mind. This is a powerful grounding practice and you can do this even when you are driving and waiting for the red signal to turn green. Allow any such interruptions in your day to remind you to come back to the practice of FGCB repeatedly. For more information and plenty of free resources to aid with the practice of meditation and deep healing, please visit my website.
What is gratitude and how to return back to our natural state of gratitude is explained in the following article. After reading this, I suggest a sitting practice of gratitude meditation with the guided meditation audio link shared below.
Awareness Journey · October 13, 2022
Gratitude is not about saying thank you! For countless generations we all grew up to the admonitions such as “Be grateful, say thank you”. No wonder that we now universally believe that the only way to have gratitude is be able to say thank you. Most practices to cultivate an attitude of gratitude has one needing to express thanks to God or some higher power for basic things such as providing us with the air we breathe and the water we drink. This is of course a good practice and it does work, well at least most of the time it does! The important point to note is that for countless generations humans have recognised the benefits of having that attitude of gratitude. It benefits the one who says thank you in a deeper and more profound way than the one who receives the thanks. The only folly then is the notion that gratitude needs the other. You need someone to have given you something and to whom you can say thanks for you to feel grateful! I shall first deal with the benefits of Gratitude and then give you a better understanding of actually what is Gratitude and how to go about cultivating a default state of gratefulness. The original Positive Attitude is; Gratitude. When you have gratitude, you begin to experience an almost magical life of synchronicity and flow rather than one of chaos and hurdles. We start to emit a glow of radiance and joy when gratitude is deeply cultivated in us. Even the physical body seems to become healthier, fitter, sleep better. Gratitude also improves your mental health and fosters better relationships. Just Google “Benefits of gratitude” and you can read about scientific research findings on this. What then is Gratitude? Gratitude is a state of mind, it is a mindset, a paradigm, a stance, a back of the mind being thing rather than an action oriented one or a doing such as saying thank you. In fact the state of being grateful is already the default state of being for all human beings! At the core of our being, we are already grateful. When we are born, we are already grateful and we keep shining with radiance and joy; just see the face of a tiny baby to know this as a fact! To cultivate a default state of gratitude therefore, we need to learn to stop doing something rather than learn to do something. How then do we cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude? By learning to stop being distracted and carried away by our thoughts all the time. Just for a moment stop engaging with the thoughts in your thinking mind and look around and notice. The simple act of noticing what is, in the here and now and then following it up with acknowledging that which we notice, is all that is needed to open that lock on our hearts allowing the energy of gratitude to flow out and fill you up. If you look around to see what is in the here and now and notice that there is a threat, a problem, an opportunity, a foreboding, a bad feeling, a good feeling, etc it doesn’t work because you are still trapped within your thoughts and emotions and are unable to notice the simplicity of this moment in the here and now. Instead you can notice all of the above and say: * That your thinking mind is here- in the here and now and there are emerging thoughts about wants and don’t-wants in the thinking mind. * You can notice your feeling-emotional mind is here in the here and now and there are emerging emotions of likes and dislikes occurring in it. * You can notice your sensing body is here and painful or pleasurable sensations are emerging in it right now. This just says that life is in the here and now in its multidimensional, phenomenal panorama within us and all round us. This observation is a disengaged observation of the reality of what is rather than what appears to be and it takes us back to our core state of gratitude. On a day to day routine basis, it would further help to just pause and notice simple little things around us and acknowledge them: * Simple acknowledgement of the air around me, * The ability of breathing within me and the presence of oxygen in the air that sustains the life within me, gets me instantly back into the state of gratefulness. * You can notice the clothes on your body, * The furniture on which you are sitting, * The roof over your head, * The device on which you are reading this, * Your eyesight, * The possession of language skills that enable you to read this, anything. Just notice what is in the here and now or in other words just acknowledge the ISNESS of this moment. Gratitude as a state of being and requires consistent coming back to. The Guided Meditation audio linked below helps you foster your new habit of being in a state of gratitude all the time to experience and enjoy a radiant joyful life of synchronicity and flow. Selvans Guided Meditation – Opening the flow of Gratitude: Selvans Guided Meditation – Look Breathe Tap
Selvans Guided Meditation – Opening the flow of Gratitude:
Selvans Guided Meditation – Opening the flow of Gratitude
In this guided meditation you begin with the four simultaneous activities to gently slow down your mental activities and quieten your mind. Then you are guided to open up the wellspring of the energy