Careful What You Allow in Your Mind
In these days of Covid-19, I’ve been binge watching television shows a bit more than is common for me. When it comes to spending excess time in front of a television, my default choices are either Star Trek reruns or those “whodunit” crime shows, so while I found myself stuck at home more often than not, I completed a few hours of the crime show series. These shows almost always involve some sort of male serial killer who goes around stalking women and burying them in the back yard or tossing the remains in a river or some other type of deviant injustice.
As I watched the shows, I noticed I kept thinking the same thing to myself: “that guy just looks like a regular guy.”
One day, not too long after I was midway through one of the television series, I was in the grocery store. With only two items in my hand, I approached the checkout lines only to end up standing in line behind a man who had about 15-20 items in his shopping cart.
*Now before I continue on with the story, let me just state that it is always important for anyone’s personal safety to practice caution and common sense when interacting with people that are unfamiliar to you.
Continuing on to the man in the store…
When I got in the checkout line, the man glanced back at me and noticing that I only had two items in my hand, told me to go ahead of him. I smiled, thanked him and took my place in front of him. He then struck up conversation by stating they needed to open up more checkout lines and then went on about more random topics. I continued to smile and respond kindly to his chit chat. His conversation was very innocent but I had just recently saturated my mind with real life stories of serial killers preying on innocent women, so I found myself hesitant of the man while having a conversation with him.
In this particular situation, I’m sure this man posed no harm but I was tense and cautious, fully prepared to throw all the candy bars and gossip magazines sitting at the register at him if he made one wrong move my way, simply because my mind was filled with thoughts of a television show.
I walked out the grocery store and chuckled at myself and shook my head at where I was about to allow my mind to take me to.
It made me think about how important it is to be deliberate about what we feed our minds because in turn we can manifest that into our reality. This is true whether the intake is positive or negative.
There is a quote that says “Thoughts become things.”
If you constantly circulate in toxic and dysfunctional environments (as in my case thoughts of men out to kill women) it is difficult to have a view of the world and the people in it that is positive and uplifting. You might find yourself unmotivated to push yourself to evolve and grow since these efforts require a sense of hope about the possibility of a better future than what is presently seen circulating around you and in your psyche.
Be mindful of your thoughts and environment that contradicts the direction you are trying to go in life. If you constantly think about cheeseburgers and fries or surround yourself with people who always eat cheeseburgers and fries, you will find a way to get a cheeseburger and fries even if your intent was to diet and lose ten pounds.
Always monitor your self-talk and the spaces your thoughts are circulating in. Make it a practice to analyze what people, places and things in your environment are taking up the space in your head and determine if it is mentally helping or hindering your ability to have fulfilling outcomes in your life.
As your thoughts direction go… so does everything else.
-Lana