The exercise of choice.

William Michael Forbes



If you believe the thoughts in your mind you will most likely be right, though not necessarily happy. wmf

A Well known fact: A thought with little or no emotional association with it has very little effect...it is the thoughts with strong feeling attached to them that are as lethal as bullets, bombs and bar fights. In observing the physiology of patients watching a variety of images, movies and TV shows, researchers were surprised at how closely the scenes with which patients identified affected them as the characters involved. i.e. the aggression, sadness, pain produced corresponding effects in the patients.

I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that when we attach an emotion to a thought...or if a thought already has an emotion attached to it...that it will cause an effect in our lives that matches the strength and intensity of the emotion/energy attached to it, once it is amplified through attention. It is also true that when you change or alter, in any degree, the feeling attached to a thought or idea that you will produce a corresponding change in the effect of the thought or idea connected to it. How many times a day do you have thoughts with emotions attached to them? How often do you recognize when you are having them? How often do you consider the effects of certain thoughts and their emotions?

Today’s How to be happy in fifteen minutes or less is about awareness and substitution and it has two parts to it. First, keep a little notepad a pen or pencil close by you throughout this day...and when you catch a negative thought in your mind...any negative thought...or find others sharing their negative thoughts write down the thought (s) if you can and make a little mark in your notepad. Whether the thought is yours or someone else’s doesn’t matter at this point as I want you to get a conscious glimpse of what is going on in your mind on a moment to moment basis that may be influencing your life adversely without your awareness. The second part of the this activity is where the happiness begins...look at the negative thought that went through your mind or that was presented to your mind by someone else and ask yourself...what would be a good, positive thought to substitute for this one? Write it down beside the one you are substituting it for and cross out the old one and notice what you feel with the new thought and...

Have a great day!

William Michael Forbes

Copyright© 2010 by William Michael Forbes. All rights reserved.