Change Your Thoughts With Meditation

Lecture and guided meditation on how to change thoughts with meditation. Includes aspects of Buddhist Vipassana and Analytic Meditation, as well as concepts from psychology and neuroscience. Helpful for stress and anxiety.

Transcript

Today on the daily meditation podcast we're going to be looking at how to change our thoughts with meditation.

This is a very popular topic that lots of people want to know about.

Many of us have problematic thoughts,

Recurring thoughts that we experience over and over again and some of those thoughts can cause significant harm.

Thankfully it is indeed possible to change our thoughts and we can do this with meditation.

In this episode we'll be looking at different meditation techniques such as vipassana and analytic meditation and we'll be discussing the nature of thoughts and by the end of this episode you will know precisely how to change your thoughts with meditation.

In a moment I'll lead you through a guided meditation but first it's important to understand the nature of our thoughts because once you understand the nature of our thoughts you can take steps to change them.

For the purpose of this episode there are a few things that you need to know about your thoughts.

Firstly your thoughts can influence you by varying degrees.

For instance some thoughts don't really bother you at all.

You are able to get on with your day while experiencing thoughts and they don't really have a profound impact on you.

But then you have those thoughts that have a real gravity to them.

Thoughts that pull you in.

I'm sure you have experienced some types of thoughts when it's as though you are living in the thought there and then.

It's as though the thought were real and happening in the present moment.

And so thoughts can influence you by varying degrees.

Thankfully you can reduce the amount of impact that a thought has on you and one way you can do that is with vipassana.

I will show you how in just a moment.

Now the second very important thing that you need to know about your thoughts is that your thoughts work via networking.

Now bear with me on this.

This will take just a moment to explain.

When you experience one thought you also experience thoughts that are related to the same topic.

For instance let's say that you think about work.

When you start to think about work you'll likely experience similar related thoughts.

For instance you might think about your colleagues,

You might think about the environment in which you work,

You might think about the duties that you have to do.

And so what happens is you experience one thought and your mind then brings up related thoughts,

Thoughts that are related by theme.

Hence work equals colleagues equals duties and so on and so on.

Now this type of networking,

This nature of the mind to think of one thing and then think of many closely related things,

This can cause problems because sometimes your mind learns to bring up stressful related thoughts.

So for instance let's say you think about work and then every time you think about work you think about stressful things that happen at work.

This causes a huge problem because now every time that you think about your work you feel stressed and it's all because of the way in which your thoughts network,

The fact that one thought about work brings up a whole bunch of stressful memories and so on.

But thankfully you can change that which is what we will do in the meditation that we're about to get into.

What we will do is we will bring a theme to mind and we will be working with the idea of work.

So we will bring to mind work and then we will train the mind to bring up related thoughts that are positive and relaxing.

What this will do is it will help the mind to learn to bring up positive,

Relaxing thoughts any time we begin to think about work.

So that is the background information that we need to know for today's meditation.

Now is the time to get meditating.

We're going to meditate on the topic of work and you're going to be able to observe how your mind produces thoughts and you will learn to change which thoughts your mind produces.

So to begin with let's go ahead and sit or lie down comfortably with good posture.

The most important thing is to make sure that the spine is straight but relaxed.

One thing you might like to do is to gently lower your chin a little bit because this will elongate your neck making your spine a little straighter and this will help you to feel grounded and focused.

Now let us go ahead and close our eyes and to begin with we shall just breathe mindfully.

We shall breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth and for a few moments all we are going to do is simply observe the breath moving around the body.

At times your mind might wander if this happens remember that it is completely normal and completely natural for your mind to wander at times.

All you must do is gently guide your mind back to your breathing and we shall continue to observe the breath.

Now let us bring to mind the topic on which we are meditating today.

The topic is work.

All I would like for you to do is bring to mind the idea of work simply think about work.

Now while you are doing this I would like for you to observe how your mind produces thoughts that are related to the same topic.

We are thinking of work and your mind will naturally bring up related topics such as thoughts about colleagues,

Thoughts about the environment in which you work,

Perhaps memories of work and so on.

So all we are doing is learning a little bit about the mind and about the nature of thoughts and we are observing that when we think about one thing the mind brings up interrelated thoughts.

Now I'm going to show you the first important way in which we can change our thoughts with meditation and that way is by using the vipassana meditation to make our thoughts less impactful so we no longer get stuck in our thoughts,

We are no longer influenced by them.

Now this might seem counter productive but the purpose of this episode is entirely about educating us and giving us insight into the mind.

With that in mind what I would like for you to do is deliberately bring to mind one event that has happened at work and I would like this to be one stressful event that has happened at work.

Again this episode is about insight and education into the mind and to gain that insight,

Though it seems ironic,

We must bring to mind one stressful event that has happened at work.

Now bring this event to mind and simply focus on it for just a moment.

Now what you will notice is that stressful thoughts have a sort of gravity in which they pull the mind in and when the mind gets pulled into thoughts those thoughts become more influencing and they have more of an impact on us.

However we can reverse this process and by reversing this process we can pull the mind out of any unwanted thought and thereby make the thought less impactful.

All we must do to do this is to visualize taking a step back away from our thoughts.

You might find it helpful to describe your thought such as by saying this is just a thought it is a mental image in my mind or it is a sound in my mind and we know from science that labeling thoughts in this way makes us less reactive to them.

You can also describe the colors of a thought or any sort of shape or any sort of sound that is occurring in the thought.

Using a thought in this way increases your mindful awareness,

Helps pull your mind away from the thought and thereby makes the thought less influential,

Makes it have less of an impact on you.

Now let us just for a moment return to focusing on our breathing.

So far in this episode we have gained insight into the mind,

We have seen how thoughts work by thematic networking and we have seen how we can reduce the influence of our thoughts on us.

Next we will train the mind to produce positive and relaxing thoughts and this is very simple to do.

Once again bring to mind the topic of work and now think of 10 positive or relaxing things about your work.

These could be memories of good times,

They could be colleagues whom we like and whom make us feel relaxed and happy,

They could be any type of thought that makes us feel happy,

Relaxed and positive and so simply go ahead and think about those positive aspects of work.

While you are doing this you are changing the way in which your mind networks your thoughts.

You are teaching your mind to create a network of the work of thoughts that is based on positivity and relaxation so that the theme of work leads to positive,

Relaxing,

Happy thoughts.

Simply think about work and recall the aspects or the events at work that make you feel positive and happy and relaxed.

And that is how we can easily change our thoughts with meditation.

By being mindful we can pull the mind out of our thoughts and in doing so we reduce the impact of our thoughts on us.

Also we can change the networking in our minds,

We can train the mind to think of a topic such as work and then to produce thoughts that are positive,

Happy and relaxing and this trains our mind to see a better perspective of whatever theme we are thinking of.

Always remember you are not a victim to your thoughts,

You are the master of your thoughts and with a little mindfulness and a little willpower you can easily change your thoughts.

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