Your mind is a magnifier. It takes whatever is in front of it and and focuses on it, blows it up, inspects it, turns it around and upside down, obsesses about it, analyzes it, and continues to spit out constant observations, until it’s all you can “think” about. That’s just what your mind does — what it’s meant to do.
This is why we’ve got to be so careful to put the things at the front of our mind that we really want to be magnifying, and be even more careful to keep things OUT of our minds that we definitely don’t want to become bigger. This magnification can be used to help us thrive and flourish, or it can be used to bring us down and paralyze us.
Brilliant friend, decide what gets magnified. It may seem like it’s out of your control. You may be in a habit of allowing any old thing to come into your mind and stay until it gets so big it explodes, taking you along with it. Your mind wants to be active. It wants to think. It WANTS to magnify . . . but it doesn’t know what the best thing is to focus on. Your heart gets to decide that.
When your heart doesn’t get a say at all, your mind goes into sort of an auto-pilot survival mode and starts magnifying whatever will keep you alive. That usually comes in the form of worry. If you don’t put something wonderful in your mind, and keep feeding it with wonderfulness . . . it will find other things to focus on.
Curate your obsessions. Place things in a row to think about, and get excited about how they will be magnified. Find beautiful things, interesting things, thoughtful things, creative things, loving things. Imagine how different the day would go if THOSE were the things that are magnified.
It’s a new kind of habit, but you can do it! And it will be so worth it.
