Our species is blessed with the fascinating intricacies of the mind.
Humans are capable of incredible feats and possess vast potential that most of us never tap into even a fraction of.
Regardless of what you pursue in your life, we all (at least most of us) deserve to live with an abundance of joy and love in our hearts.
Yet, even with this incredible and unfathomable brain of ours, whether we achieve tremendous heights professionally or not, many of us live with a persistent sense of fear, agitation, dissatisfaction, worry or doubt.
Why is this?
And more importantly, how do we overcome it so that we can bathe in a life overflowed with contentment and peace?
This can be achieved by putting our perceptions into question.
Built up over the course of a lifetime, most of the day is spent pre-programmed by our deeply rooted habits.
We tend to live on auto-pilot, allowing our mind to be the one in the driver’s seat, thinking, acting and reacting just as it has always done so.
And as the saying goes, if you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always been getting.
A vicious cycle indeed.
But, it’s possible to observe and be a witness to the daily thoughts in our head, as well as the emotions we feel from those thoughts and the actions that typically follow them.
No other living thing (as far as we know) is capable of this ability to not just think, but be aware of the thought as you do so.
With this in mind, we can learn to not only become more aware of the circumstances that bring us negative emotions, but begin to analyze why they do so.
This enables you to monitor the rampant thoughts that have previously gone unmonitored and typically led to the feelings you don’t want to feel.
By questioning why you are perceiving a situation in a certain way, you are accessing a level of consciousness that has rarely, if ever, been utilized before.
Understanding that our thoughts and views are pliable and can be molded to best serve us is wisdom.
And making the choice to put in the effort to adjust our perceptions so that we can minimize negativity and enhance positivity is what the wise do.
In this realm of mindfulness, favorable change can be made that will last a lifetime.
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.” – Epictetus