THE UNGUARDED MIND

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "A man is what he thinks about all day long."  As a professional who has been in sales and management for the past twenty years and who now has a home-based business, I can attest to the reality that a person's greatest obstacle to success is his or her own thoughts.  Sometimes it only takes one little thought to destroy what was shaping up to be a record-breaking month.  On the Journey to Amazing, sometimes you run over a skunk and you get what we call in the sales profession "stinking thinking."  When you work from home, there is often no one there to help take away the smell.  In any case, it is important to understand the difference between unhealthy and healthy thought patterns as well as being able to develop mindfulness in order to become successful.

It is estimated that on average each person processes 12,000 thoughts per day.  That equals out to be about one thought every five seconds.  Unfortunately, the majority of these thoughts are known to be unhelpful and unhealthy.  These "unguarded" thoughts are driven by emotions like anxiety, feelings of pain, distress, irritability, and craving.  Having thoughts is a natural process, a part of who we are, but it doesn't mean that we are helpless or held captive to our thoughts.  Our thought patterns are just that...habits that we have allowed to dominate our innermost sanctuary.  Like him or not, Buddha got it right when he said that nothing causes as much pain as an unguarded mind.

One of the most important keys to success, not only in business, but in life, is to develop and practice useful forms of thinking.  In order to understand how we can develop useful forms of thinking, though, we must become mindful of unhealthy patterns.  The first thing we must learn in this process is that we can't always believe everything we think.  Just because we think it doesn't mean that it is true.  We may think that we are unsuccessful, that we aren't able to sell, that we aren't any good talking to people, but those thoughts are part of a cycle that only leads us to unhappiness.

We must next learn how to identify unhealthy or unguarded thoughts.  There are five general patterns, or what we call hindrances that represent the texture of the unguarded mind, all of which make us unhappy.  These five hindrances sum up most of our thinking patterns in our daily life.  These patterns are created by the mind as strategies to help us find solutions to our discontent.  Also, these hindrances are cyclical, for instance: an anxious thought or moment gives rise to certain feelings, which in turn reinforce the anxiety only to perpetuate and deepen the original feeling.  The five hindrances are as follows:

1. Worrying:  We often times worry about things we can not control, that we fear, that might happen in the future, or that we think someone else thinks or feels about us.  Worry leads to stress.
2. Day Dreaming:  We sometimes don't seem present and use our thoughts to escape.  These thoughts may seem random or disconnected.  We may find ourselves not wanting to be in a certain place or situation.  These thoughts lead to a lack of peace and inner rest.
3. Doubting:  We undermine ourselves and question our actions.  We choose not to trust our intuition and we begin to think ourselves incapable of better than we are.  These thoughts lead to depression.
4. Longing:  We use thoughts like "If only I could...then I would be happy."  We constantly look for something outside of ourselves to make us happy.  If I could just get this job, or have this much money, or meet this person, or if I could just stop smoking, or procrastinating...Longing leads us to irritability and unrest.
5. Arguing:  Often we find ourselves arguing in our minds with someone over certain issues or situations.  We become consumed with the argument, often playing it over and over in our minds.  The reality is that the argument we are having isn't with the other person.  They are not present, so what we are really doing is arguing with ourselves.  If we argue with ourselves, who can really win that kind of argument?

Now that we understand the five hindrances of the unguarded mind, we must begin to practice mindfulness.  We must practice becoming aware of our thoughts when we are caught in the cycle, realize which hindrance we are cycling through, and gently bring ourselves to a positive stream of thought.  One might define mindfulness as mental freedom, a place where we can become aware of our thoughts and experience freedom from harmful patterns.  A few of the best ways I have found to accomplish this is through the use of breathing techniques, relaxation techniques, and meditation.  Meditation is a simple process of training the mind to be more attentive.  The reality is that everyone deals with stress.  Negative stress has its roots in unguarded thinking, and one of the best ways to overcome stress is through developing consistent relaxation or meditation practice.

Through mindfulness we will find that over time we are making thousands and thousands of little decisions about which thoughts we are going to allow and which qualities we are going to develop.  We are sculpting ourselves, shaping ourselves, and changing our inner make-up.  We are changing the kind of person that we are becoming.  People often say that to be successful you must first change the way you think.  You must become the success on the inside that you believe you can accomplish on the outside.  Just like everything else in life, it takes work, dedication, and persistence.  It isn't a get-rich-quick mental scheme.  You probably won't become on overnight success, but if you practice it, you will success...and you will succeed.  You deserve nothing less than amazing!

Remember:  A mind without hindrances is a happy place to be!