Building “Mental Immunity” against negative thoughts …

(137/365) Busy mind

Creative Commons Licensephoto credit:Sarah G…

Thoughts, much like pollen or germs in the air, are ram­pant. They are every­where. They don’t orig­i­nate in our minds, but belong to the col­lec­tive uni­verse. As Byron Katie is fond of say­ing, “There are no new, or orig­i­nal, stress­ful thoughts!”

In the same way germs or aller­gens affect those with weak immune sys­tems, we, too, are “infected” by neg­a­tive thoughts, if and when our “men­tal immu­nity” is com­pro­mised . Only then are we sus­cep­ti­ble to the “germs,” i.e. neg­a­tive thoughts, that sur­round us.

Our “men­tal immu­nity” is weak­ened by years of believ­ing neg­a­tive thoughts/beliefs/“stories” about our­selves and oth­ers and this leaves us sus­cep­ti­ble to the stress­ful thoughts that run through the mind.

When our “men­tal immu­nity” is high, neg­a­tive thoughts, like germs, may enter the mind but they don’t “stick,” they just move on through. Our job is to inves­ti­gate and adjust any thought that causes us unhap­pi­ness so we can build our “men­tal immu­nity” against negativity.

4 Responses to Building “Mental Immunity” against negative thoughts …
  1. Jon
    June 15, 2009 | 6:11 am

    So true and so necessary.

    Thank you for your blog.

  2. Tracy
    June 15, 2009 | 12:56 pm

    I just real­ized that i look for dis­ap­point­ing stories/experiences in the out­side world to jus­tify my own lim­it­ing stories.I will open a news­pa­per and be more inter­ested in read­ing that painful story of failure/frustrations/disappointment.…I always won­dered why i was so keen in want­ing to lis­ten to ther people’s frus­trated sto­ries and i feel that partly it is to jus­tify my own dis­ap­point­ment s in life and jus­tify the lim­ited sto­ries i have about prosperity/love and hap­i­ness..
    I was read­ing about the concious/sub concious/superconcious parts of our mind.…It res­onates so well on how we should choose what goes into our con­cious mind because this impresses on our sub­con­cious and with prac­tise becomes a belief..whichis pro­jected as a real­ity…
    I am feel­ing stuck on the beliefs part of it as there are times i am not so clear on what i truly believe…in my subconcious…how does one iden­ity a true belief that exist within them from emo­tional drama that may be going on with them as a result of being triggered?

  3. Lynne
    June 15, 2009 | 6:17 pm

    Sounds like you are mak­ing progress Tracy.

    You ask “how does one iden­ity a true belief that exist within them from emo­tional drama that may be going on with them as a result of being triggered?”

    It is our beliefs that trig­ger our emo­tional dra­mas. We learn to iden­tify our neg­a­tive beliefs by pay­ing atten­tion to the things that trig­ger us. These trig­gers are always a fin­ger point­ing to an unhappy per­sonal belief. We pay spe­cial atten­tion to our neg­a­tive reac­tions so we can fol­low them in to what the under­ly­ing belief is.

    There is no other cause of emo­tional drama besides our own painful beliefs. Our dra­mas are not caused by some­thing some­one said or did. They are caused by the thoughts we think and believe.

    When we find our­selves attracted to “bad news,” for instance, we can know that there is a belief prompt­ing that inter­est. Per­haps we are look­ing for evi­dence to sup­port a per­sonal belief about the world as being an unfair, scary or dan­ger­ous place. We are attracted to the things that val­i­date our viewpoints/beliefs.

    Keep up the wor­thy introspection!

  4. Tracy
    June 26, 2009 | 4:37 am

    I had two bit­ter exchanges.one with a work colleague,and the other with my sister.In both instances i felt attacked and i was angry and i wanted to get back at them and in some way pun­ish them for mak­ing me feel angry and upset.…I noticed that each time i feel angry my thoughts switch to blam­ing the other per­son and look­ing for rea­sons as to why its their fault..then i want to make them pay for their mistake…so the next time we have an encounter i find myself look­ing for ways to pun­ish them either by not speak­ing to them or mak­ing their lives difficult…It almost comes out naturally.…Its no won­der that i carry so many grudges inside.I resolve them the wrong way…I decided to switch and instead focus on my part of the prob­lem and my anger.I find it dif­fi­cult to search within myself the belief fol­low­ing my anger and i feel stuck…I also find it so hard to not to blame the out­side and i have to keep shift­ing my focus back to myself each time i hear myself saying…But…
    It feels easy to read and under­stand the con­cept behind lim­it­ing beliefs but when it comes to real life sit­u­a­tions i can feel my ego vir­tu­ally resist­ing this new con­cept of chang­ing my beliefs.…Its inter­est­ing to see how much the beliefs we have about our­selves actu­ally affect how we relate to vir­tu­ally every­one around us.

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