We already explained that the best way to manage your thoughts and become mindful is to focus on new things: The Power of Your Thoughts: Are You Mindful or Mindless?
But what if there are no new things around you for now?
There are always a lot of new things we can focus our mind on. However, the best solution is still in our mind. We can intentionally focus our mind on something good and special to make ourselves mindful and prevent us from overthinking. This process is called meditation. There are so many ways of doing it. You can simply focus your mind on your breath, the process of inhalation and exhalation.
Meditation that was invented by Indians, over 5000 years ago, was later used by religions to make it a religious process and activity. They added something to it that Indians call “mantra”. Mantra or melody is a word (or sentence) that you can repeat in your meditation process. Therefore, instead of focusing on your breathing, you can focus on repeating a special word. Then, they added more to it and said that each of “their mantras” has an especial and magic effect and property, like medicines that each of them has to be used for a specific problem. They made it more and more complicated with superstitions and nonsense lies, to create a big market to rip people off.
Indeed, none of these are true and have no scientific foundation. There is no special mantra with any special property. I have explained in this article that the brain can easily become fooled, the way that placebo fools it. Meditation makes the brain be focused on one thing, and prevents it from focusing on too many things that are mainly negative. It means, it prevents us from being mindless and it stops overthinking. The simplest meditation which is focusing on our breathing does this perfectly, while words or mantras can do it too. Therefore, mantras have no special and magic effect. They just focus our brain on one thing exactly as breathing does.
So, if you want to meditate and be mindful, especially when you are free and there is nothing to focus on, which is the worst time that gives the chance to negative thoughts to take control of your mind, you can do deep inhalation and exhalation and focus your mind on them. Alternatively, you can choose a word that you love to repeat, and then repeat it slowly while your mind is focused on it. You don’t have to buy meditation books or pay the so-called meditation gurus or yogis to teach you how to meditate. You don’t have to pay the spirituality scams and con artists to sell you special mantras that are specific for you and your current life and mental situation.
They say, as a mantra or melody, the word “tranquility” has such a soothing effect. You must know its meaning if you want it to work for you. I have tried it and it is really good. However, do you know what one of the best mantras that I have tried and have always been amazed by its tranquilizing and balancing effect is?
It made me laugh and looked stupid to me the first time that I saw it in a book. They said it is one of the mantras that Buddhist monks in Tibet use a lot. It looked like a joke the first time I saw it, but when I tried it, I learned why people must use it and repeat it in their minds at least a few times a day, even if they don’t want to meditate or use this sentence as a mantra. It is: I haven’t heard any bad news!
I already explained here that 2/3 to 3/4 of our thoughts are negative. Above all, we hear lots of bad news every day. Media are always focused on bad news and repeat them so many times 24 hours a day 7 days a week. I also told you that our brain can easily become fooled and it cannot distinguish between imagination and reality. What you imagine is a reality for your brain. Therefore, when you fill your brain with negative things you absorb from the environment, while it is also busy with manufacturing negative thoughts on its own, then your mind and life becomes full of negativity.
I am one of those who follow all kinds of news related to all countries, especially the economic news. I share some of them here with you and many others. Most of them, like inflation and unemployment growth, are negative. Besides, the political news, like conflicts between different countries, especially the United States that is more important to me, are currently more negative. What does my poor brain conclude from all this negativity??? I think it has the right to think that we are at the end of the world. Our brain is like a computer. If you give it bad data, it will process them and will give you bad feelings, as they say computers are garbage in garbage out.
But, are the conditions really that bad and dark? No, they are not. We think they are too bad because we are mainly focused on bad news and negativity. When this happens, we must repeat in our mind that I haven’t heard any bad news!
As soon as I repeat this sentence in my mind, my brain flushes away all the negativity. It empties its garbage can that has become full of garbage by me. It becomes calm and quiet and makes me relaxed. A smile forms on my face slowly and I feel fresh and free of tension. It makes me remember the time that I was a small happy boy who looked for fun and a reason to laugh out loud in everything he saw and heard. That 5-year boy is still alive in me, but I bury him under negativity and bad news I enter into my brain all the time. So I must repeat, I haven’t heard any bad news!
Try it! You don’t have to pay doctors or gurus to make you happy. Your brain does it for you for free. Just feed it with good things 🙂