There is a popular expression: “Be careful what you wish for - it might come true.” But this is also true of thoughts. Thoughts are material. And they do not always coincide with our desires. And therefore, they can harm us.
Fears, anxieties, negative images of the future that we pay too much attention to - all of this seems to attract the events we imagine into real life.
Our brain, like an executor of commands, begins to search for confirmation of this attitude in the space of our future options - and finds it. This is how a self-fulfilling prophecy is formed.
I have experienced this myself. For a long time, I lived with inner anxiety. In my thoughts about the future, I constantly returned to the same fear — the fear of losing my health, contracting an incurable disease, being weak and infirm, becoming a burden to others. I tried to chase these thoughts away. But they kept coming back. I pushed these thoughts out, but they continued to surface from my subconscious.
And at some point, it really happened. What I feared most happened. The grim diagnosis was confirmed. Without any compelling reasons or grounds.
And then I realized: I myself, with my thoughts, had unconsciously paved the way for this. It happened just like with Job: “What I feared has come upon me.”
This realization was very painful.
But after the shock passed, I thought: if I can “attract” bad things, then I can also attract good things in the same way.
If, on an internal level, I consciously choose to think not about fears and apprehensions, but about opportunities and positive changes, then my decisions and actions can change reality for the better.
Marcus Aurelius wrote: “If you are upset about something external, it is not the thing itself that oppresses you, but your judgment of it. But it is in your power to eliminate the latter. If something in your own mood upsets you, who is stopping you from correcting your way of thinking?”
So now I try not to control every thought (that's impossible), but to notice the flow of my thinking. Where has it led me? To the light or to a disturbing shadow? And I try to steer it in the right direction.
After all, any perception is a choice. A choice of what to believe in.
If we believe in a thought, it lingers and begins to guide our lives. If we don't believe it, it passes by without taking root.
And we can always challenge and change a negative thought, no matter how harsh and cruel it may be.
I understand that this is not a panacea that will quickly rid me of the influence of negative thinking.
But I hope it will help me become more positive and take the impending reality in stride.
Let's be more attentive to our thoughts -after all, they can both create and destroy our lives.
I wish everyone peace and goodness.
