{"id":785,"date":"2013-03-27T08:24:21","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T08:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/?p=785"},"modified":"2013-03-27T08:24:21","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T08:24:21","slug":"i-think-therefore-i-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/i-think-therefore-i-am\/","title":{"rendered":"I think therefore I am"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think therefore I am\u201d\u00a0Ren\u00e9 Descartes<\/strong> (French philosopher, mathematician, and writer 1596 \u2013 1650)<\/p>\n

We are always thinking, we can\u2019t stop ourselves, and according to the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging<\/strong>\u00a0the average person has 70,000 thoughts per day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unfortunately a large number of these thoughts are not a lot of use to us, even getting in our way. We may\u00a0be thinking about what happened in the past or what might (or might not) happen in the future.
\nNegative thoughts in particular can be very damaging, causing stress and anxiety as we worry about things\u00a0or talk ourselves out of doing something well.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m actually sat in the car writing this while waiting for my wife, who is in a meeting. Instead of just thinking\u00a0about this blog my thoughts skip to \u201chow long will I have to wait\u201d, \u201cthe noise of a passing bus\u201d and \u201cthe sun\u00a0going behind the clouds\u201d etc\u2026
\nWhy can\u2019t I concentrate and make it interesting and witty? What was that joke I heard yesterday that was so\u00a0witty? Who said it?
\nThere I am\u2026 going off on another chain of thoughts\u2026 that is not what I need!<\/p>\n

How can you keep your thoughts\u00a0centered\u00a0on what you really have to do and stop other non productive\u00a0thoughts popping into your head?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"think\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To get the mind tuned to think about just one thing consistently requires some serious self control.<\/strong>
\nVarious texts on meditation refer to the monkey mind that, like an inquisitive monkey, can\u2019t keep still and\u00a0needs to be trained. Obviously an experienced teacher and some considerable time and effort are needed to\u00a0reach a reasonable level of mastery.<\/p>\n

A faster, but less effective method than meditation, is to set clear objectives and a deadline.<\/strong>
\nYes, good old goal setting works. It helps if the logical reason for doing the task is clearly thought through.
\nThen, if possible, try to get the emotional situation in perspective. Is there something holding you back, some\u00a0fear stopping you completing the task?
\nWith the use of both logic and emotion a strong \u201cWhy\u201d can be established.<\/p>\n

Take my situation for example, my wife should feel pleased if she knows I have got this blog done already\u00a0and taken full advantage of the time waiting. I also will have trained my monkey and\u00a0focused, even with the\u00a0distractions around.<\/p>\n

This may not be the longest blog that I have written, but it is food for thought, and anyway here comes my\u00a0wife…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think therefore I am\u201d\u00a0Ren\u00e9 Descartes (French philosopher, mathematician, and writer 1596 \u2013 1650) We are always thinking, we can\u2019t stop ourselves, and according to the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging\u00a0the average person has 70,000 thoughts per day. Unfortunately a large number of these thoughts are not a lot of use to us, even getting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":788,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785\/revisions\/788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}