Heart Pocket Word for the Day is Think!

The word from my heart pocket is Think.

Exercise your mind. It's always working, even when we don't want it to. We try to stop it with alcohol and drugs and sleep and more noise. None of those have the long-lasting effect we want. We try to calm it with breathing and meditation and physical exercise. This is effective because we channel our energy and focus on the task at hand. 

Taking off your thinking cap isn't easy. The mind is a busy factory. It is a giant muscle that bears thinking about ... and if we take charge of it, it serves us well.

To think, to cogitate, to intellectualize and conceptualize are all mental processes we do, well, almost without thinking. A better way to say it is that we perform these processes almost unconsciously. We're so practiced at thinking that it happens without much effort, except when we're taking a test or attempting something new. When we're in new brain territory, our consciousness comes alive and we're in the driver seat again. We struggle, not because it's really so hard, but because we resist the effort. When we relax into learning, when it's fun or there is passion behind it, struggle falls away and it is replaced by high energy and pleasure.

The word Think has other meanings. We expect something when we think something is going to happen. Thinking reflects what we believe and here's where the power lies. Our thoughts are directly connected to our belief systems. The more we think a thought, it becomes foremost in our minds. We focus and everything in our world can be connected to it. We begin to notice details related to the thought. We might even get obsessive about it. Genius works this way. Genius shuts out diversion and everything unrelated to its purpose. That still leaves a lot of ground to cover and sometimes genius gets so focused it misses the brilliance in the end. Real genius is focused thought with the flexibility of mind to transcend ego.

Conceptualizing is a dreamy sort of thinking. It allows lots of imagining and this happens unconsciously when we experience some sort of movement like driving in the car or when water is moving around us in the shower. We have good ideas or flashes of brilliance when we're walking or doing some form of aerobic exercise. This also happens when the mind is at rest, as in sleep or meditation. What happens in all of these instances is the mind takes a break; it deflates and makes room for related thought to circle and move about and converse with other thoughts. When there's a connection, we tap into it and bingo! Thinking is on the verge of becoming a thing, something concrete that will manifest itself in the world.

This isn't brilliant writing I'm doing. It's mindful, of course, because it's based on articles I've read, conversations where I've paid attention and my own experience. This writing reflects my thinking. I think and amazingly my thoughts zoom through my fingers placed on the computer keyboard and magically appear on a simulated piece of paper. It is equally incredible that you are sitting there reading them on your computer, a product that came in part from thinking. I'm thinking and you're thinking and we're connecting through our thoughts.

I think that is utterly amazing and it suggests that telepathy isn't far away. 

Just think about it ...