_The Power of Your Subconscious Mind_ by Joseph Murphy
This summer really required some reading to get a handle on my mind and my reactions to situations that were beyond my control. Rather than focus on what I could not control, I decided to look into the areas that I can.
Our subconscious minds are very powerful and attract what we spend most of our time thinking about. Therefore, learning to focus on not only positive thoughts but also results rather than NOTs took some work. For example, repeating to yourself “I will not eat bread” generally causes one to eat bread, because the mind is attracting the salient part of this sentence – eat bread. ๐ So, it took some restructuring of what my mind says.ย However, over time I found that creating thought patterns like this were effective and not only brought about a sense of calm within myself, but also to those around me.
Dr Murphy walks through the various areas of life that we generally worry – finances, relationships, business, etc. – and offers alternatives to thought patterns that do not serve us. He also discusses taking out “I” in mantras where it may be difficult for us to visualize a reality such as “I am wealthy.” There are lots of variations to wealth and for each person there would be a debate on how much is required to fulfil this. Instead, he recommends simply saying “wealth” to attract it in limitless amounts.
I found that using a series of mantras was effective whilst swimming as it can sometimes be a bit tedious to do laps, but with mantras being repeated so as to create the new positive thought patterns, the laps went by quickly. ๐
Since I was doing this for most of the two months of the summer that we were staying at our friends’ place, it has now become a bit of habit to think in this way that I no longer focus on ‘mantras’ per se, but remind myself to calm my mind.
If you have interest in the mind, brain and patterns this is a very interesting read. Some might find it dry, but it is actually written in a way that it is quite easy to flip the pages. ๐
~T ๐
