Thought | Back To Brilliance Personal Growth

How Thought Creates Stress

Written by Lynne & Vivian on March 23, 2010 – 7:00 am -

Life is truly an inside-out job. The thoughts which are inside of us create our lives. They certainly create how we deal with situations. The thoughts that we focus on grow. If we have a lot of thoughts about worries, concerns, and fears, and put attention on those, we will continue to create stress.

When we have situations in our lives that could be precursors to stress we have been conditioned to solve those problems with the computer part of our mind. We go back into our storage banks to find a similar situation, and then pull it out and say “here’s the answer”.

Most often those old ways of dealing with things don’t apply in the new situation because we’ve grown and changed, and circumstances are different. Trying to meet today’s problems from the computer mind is a surefire formula for creating stress and distress.

There is another habit of the mind at play here. It is what we call thought attacks. When you are lost in spinning worries and concerns you are really having a thought attack. While your thoughts are circling around a worry, you aren’t going anywhere. But your life force and energy are being drawn into that whirlpool and being wasted. The more you can recognize and catch a pattern, the faster you can move to clarity and action.

Here’s an example of how thought attacks might occur.

A sales person has often made sales and lost sales.
They might receive a call that tells them a sale they had counted on was not going to occur. They might have thought “I was counting on that sale and it just fell through; I can’t believe it!”
Then as they continue to think about the situation another thought might follow: “Oh my gosh, what am I going to do – I have all my bills plus the new car payment due in two weeks.”

Those two thoughts have created a momentum and they are off and running into the future:

“Now I have to cancel the roof project on my house – and it will probably leak again this winter if the snows are anything like last winter” and
“My spouse is going to be upset, big time upset!”
“The economy is getting worse. The stupid politicians never get the stimulus packages going in time.”

When one thought is given a lot of attention, it can attract a dozen more of the same kind of thoughts. When this happens, one is caught in a full-fledged thought attack, with the computer mind fully in control.

Keep in mind, the chain of thoughts described above started with a message received in a two-minute phone call. When we take the ride into a thought attack, anything else going on in our lives is up for grabs. We may be worried about our child, toddler or adolescent. Whether it’s their health or grades or attitudes, looking at any concern or worry often attracts the “maybe’s” and “could happen next” thoughts that lurk in our old patterns or in what we observe in the lives of others close to us. We are fueling thought attacks faster than the speed of light and feeling the stress that accompanies the growing numbers of spinning thoughts in our minds.

Our thoughts are the foundation for how we experience our lives. Once we know how thoughts create our lives, it is easier to understand how thoughts create our stress. We have a choice. We can either spin around in our worries and concerns, or we can learn to get back to our Brilliance, and access the thoughts that will create a life of satisfaction and ease.

Tags: Brilliance, stress, thought, thought attack
Posted in Stress Relief | Comments

The Time for Brilliance is NOW

Written by Lynne & Vivian on February 4, 2010 – 4:00 pm -

Have you ever watched the news and found your muscles tightening, your stomach clenching, or a tear in your eye? Was your response generated by the number of soldiers and civilians lost in a war that day? Was it the gruesome reports of genocide in a foreign country? Or was it the steady flow of politicians, CEO’s, public servants or ‘regular folk’ who were once again accused of a wide variety of offenses, breaches of trust, or an even more heinous crime?

Our first response is to turn off the TV or blame someone or something for the horrible news. Perhaps you have thrown up your hands, like us, and said “How could they be so stupid?” or “How could someone do such a thing?” If we take the time to go to the next level of understanding and responsibility, we may find that we, too, are implicated; we, too, are a part of creating the world we see on our TV screens.

For every person slaughtered in a foreign genocide, we can identify a thought we have held – a thought that diminished another in order to raise our own esteemed status a little higher. For every report of shaken baby syndrome and the subsequent shattered lives, we can locate that short but strong impulse to shake someone, to wake them up, to shut them up, that we have felt inside of us.

As the health care debate in congress continues, so does the tenor and tone of the accusations and discord. It looks like everyone is out there looking for the dirt on everyone else. All are hoping to gain some fame by broadcasting the inflammatory findings that will turn the tide, or at least make a big splash.

What is going on? What do we need to understand at a new level? How can we create a world that is not distinguished by the most brutal events, but rather the most brilliant?

What IS going on? Our consciousness, the level and focus of our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, is creating what we see around us. We tend to separate ourselves from these ‘bad’ events and we believe that we could not or never would engage in such occurrences. Yet when we examine our thoughts in detail, we find that we engage in destructive habits of thinking every day.

We are part of the whole; we are connected to everything around us. We must change ourselves, our consciousness, before we can change the world.

There is more than we can see as this is a time of great change. There is a dynamic healing occurring as we come to understand that our thoughts contribute to the outer reality of life on earth. With our uplifted and expanded awareness of how it all works, we are creating this cleansing and healing. Much of the negativity that we perceive at this time is connected to this releasing of old habits of thoughts and patterns of being in the collective consciousness.

What do we need to understand at a new level? In all cases, we need to understand that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have. This understanding includes ourselves. We are all working with worn-out thought systems that need a fresh infusion of universal Brilliance. This natural Brilliance is what we breathe everyday, what we see as nature rejuvenating the earth in each season, and what is at the center of each atom that forms us.

How can we create a world of Brilliance? We need to be aware that as the dark clouds of old thinking dissipate, we have the opportunity to create a truly brilliant world. We are creating a world that reflects the best in each of us individually and collectively. This new understanding moves us into harmony with ourselves, and then with all of life. The Time for Brilliance is NOW!

Tags: change the world, health care, Natural Brilliance, thought
Posted in Brilliance, Thinking | Comments

Magnetize Your Life

Written by Lynne & Vivian on November 12, 2009 – 8:00 am -

Ever play with magnets when you were a kid? It was great fun, even though it became a bit monotonous over time. Nothing was more accurate and never-fail than a magnet and some metal. The magnet was guaranteed to pull all the metal in your vicinity to you.

Now that we are adults, we get to play at the same game. Often we are playing unaware that we are pulling to us the aspects of life that we focus our thoughts on. It is quite amazing and is equal in accuracy to our childhood pastimes.

Now, what are we saying? Take a look at your day’s high points and low points. Jot down a few of the strongest elements of your day. Then ask yourself: “What thoughts did I pay attention to today?” and “How do these thoughts relate to the most memorable incidents of my day?”

We create the flavor of our day through our thinking as surely as a magnet will always attract metal. Our accumulated thoughts, our Mindset, can be put to good use to create our lives. Check everything around you – what does it look like, sound like, feel like? The quickest way to discover where your attention has been is to look around you. You have created this with the magnet of your mind.

P.S. You can always shift your focus and put your attention on what you want the most. This will surely change the picture of your life.

Tags: mindset, thought
Posted in mindset | Comments

Change Your Mind for Stress Relief

Written by Lynne & Vivian on August 25, 2009 – 1:52 am -

Change Your Mind for Stress Relief

The experts say that we are designed to experience stress and react to it. Stress can be positive and intensify our awareness. If you have ever played soccer or softball or tennis or any competitive sport, you know this kind of stress is actually exhilarating and can bring out our best efforts.

However, the stress we feel from job pressures and demands is not exhilarating. The stress you experience when getting bad news about someone you love might feel like a ball of fire in your gut and a tightness that takes time to release. The stress many of us have felt in long-term bad relationships can even lead to emotional disorders because our chronic stress reactions haven’t been released or resolved.

In other words, the stress that continues unabated, that we can’t get relief from, becomes distress to our bodies. That’s the kind of stress we have to get a handle on. If we don’t, we face the consequences of anger, depression, high blood pressure, and many more health problems.