A Day Has 86,400 Seconds

A day has 86,400 seconds. We have an average of about 65,000 waking thoughts in these 86,400 seconds. Of these 65,000 thoughts, many are positive, uplifting thoughts and many are not. How many of those negative thoughts are generated by past programming or an environment that is not well selected or suited to you? How many of those negative or neutral thoughts are composed of less-than-accurate or not very helpful past programming? How many are a result of the surrounding environment that was provided by others that may not have had your best interests at heart? Or by family or friends that tried their best but had their own issues to deal with, and in so doing may have limited or damaged your self-concept? How many of those negative thoughts are the result of your confused or chaotic choices (or lack of conscious choices) producing a negative environment by unconsciously "settling" for something because "that's just the way it is" instead of choosing only the best for you? How many are the result of even more pervasive erroneous assumptions and beliefs that migrated into you from a long series of decisions made by the rest of humanity as one mass consciousness over time?

Let's bring more clarity into the situation. If you are like most people, you have an average of 15,000 seconds of positive, uplifting or possibly even joyful thoughts every day. That leaves 50,000 waking thoughts of dense, dead, negative harmful or, at best, neutral energies. Kinda scary, isn't it? But it's not necessarily your fault, most of that is old conditioning, it's not even yours. So, now that you are beginning to realize this, you may be wondering how you can do something about it. It's good to discover how this has been happening, right? It's just a part of the picture.

Now imagine those 50,000 negative (or maybe just not that positive) thoughts as people tromping through your living room while you sit idly by doing nothing. Over your lifetime you got so used to them that they're barely noticable, even with their muddy shoes, stinky, messy clothes and unsavory looks. Day after day you allow 50,000 negative people to just walk through the sacred space of your inner mind without even noticing them anymore! Fifty thousand negative vibrations/thoughts leaving a mess behind in your head, and we're supposed to accept that as 'normal'? Puh-lease! More dirty little puppy prints all over your energy, your feelings, your self-esteem, your hopes and your dreams!! Are you ready to yell "STOP IT" yet? Because that's all you have to do, notice them and choose to feel better, choose that which you would rather have instead. It only seems confusing at first because you got so used to being overwhelmed that you believed you could not choose more satisfying thoughts.Change the inside and it changes the outside. To start increasing positive shifts in your life, just choose to become aware of who and what you're letting into your private quarters, your Inner Self. Those negative thoughts are threads linked to people and events that installed those negative ideas and feelings. Eventually, you took over from those outsiders and took their place in keeping you down. Look and listen to the original source of those negative thoughts and modify them. Didn't know you could do that? Try it. Choose something different! The more you choose to please yourself the easier it gets. Change what comes to mind into what you want and then the easier and better it gets to change the rest. Here's how you stop those puppies form coming in leaving all those footprints on your soul.

When any set of thoughts come to mind that are maladaptive or just not useful, just notice them for a second and see how they stop and wag their tails looking guilty and sheepish for what they've been doing on your rugs. Ask them where they came from, tell them to never darken your carpets and furniture again! If those negative thoughts connected to remembered events protest or just won't stop, remember, YOU are in charge, do whatever you want to to change the sound of their voices to squeaky little mouse voices, or mute them totally into silence, and as you do so, notice how your feelings improve, pressure releases, and they lose their impact over you. If that negative thought is a bother, literally pick it up and send it whizzing off toward the horizon, getting smaller and smaller and fainter and fainter, never to be seen or heard again. If those disturbing recollections keep looping through, enjoy telling them off and kicking them out, and do whatever you need to do to make their departure a permanant one. Now, this is the good part. Replace them with thoughts and images of anything you like, anything at all. Believe it or not, this is exactly what happens in the midst of Cognitive Behavioral, Rational Emotive, and many other very effective therapeutic processes. Of course it works best at first with a partner familiar with the process, but that's it; it's that simple. It seems unusual when you first use this approach because for so long you let those naughty puppies run through all the time and forgot that you were in charge.

You can think of it this way. Remember back in grade school when you had to get a permission slip to leave the classroom and go through the halls? But you're an adult now, and you still think you need permission slips to do something unusual. Give yourself a permission slip to start enjoying your self again, just beginning to remember what it's like to think about what you enjoy, and what would make you happy. There is no reason to deny yourself happiness anymore. By letting the trash from the past traipse through your sacred spaces all day you got used to feeling poorly, settling for pain and struggle, or waiting for something better and getting more and more unhappy and disappointed. Change the inside and the outside has to change. If any one of those negative thoughts is too big to handle in this way, we've developed a process called "Healing the Secret Heart". Use "Healing the Secret Heart" on any of that old trash from the past or an experience that may be of your own making or that happened when it should never have happened. Give your heart what it is aching for, and don't be stingy. These processes work because the mind remembers, experiences, and creates absolutely everything only in the ever present Now. The past, insofar as it is meaningful to you, exists inside your Now. So does the future. Create it and re-create it for your most delightful, compassionate, and prosperous practical improvement.

We could describe the processes of thought in terms of 'making movies', because that's how we experience them, through our five senses. You are the Director of your own movies, and your movies organize, plan, orchestrate, and affect the world you walk around in. Your thoughts are your creations and you have not been taking charge of them. Thoughts can only be experienced in any of your five senses, so they arrive in your awareness just like very intense movies. Only you can say stop, you can say go, you can completely change the story and the script that plays inside all day long in the back of your mind during those other 50,000 seconds. Your life is not a runaway train, and you are not hopelessly, helplessly out of control. You just forgot that you are in charge.

The world is what it is. You may or may not have a lot of control over much of it. But you can have more control over what thoughts come through your sacred space in those remaining 50,000 seconds! Slowly but surely, the more you get comfortable with being the director of your own movies, making adjustments to the ones that play the scenes from your past, the more easily and the more enjoyably your new movies shift your life. By changing the inside movie, you change the outside movie, and the more proof you have in daily life that the world around you responds to these inner changes you are making.

You and only you have control over your life, your feelings, your wants and your desires. The easiest way to control them is to give yourself permission to be the Director of your own movies. Enjoy making new ones, replace those old worn-out ones that used to wander through your living room with new ones and notice how much better everything seems as they now come smiling and dancing through your head instead. When you change the way you experience things, the way you experience things changes.