Expansion Versus Contraction

The average human has anywhere from 40,000-50,000 thoughts in a single day. It’s entirely too easy to identify with these thoughts and to take each one for the truth. The thoughts we believe are the thoughts that end up creating our feelings and our realities.
 
Because we have so many thoughts each day, it can be difficult to sort through them. The first step to being more mindful is to be aware that we are in fact, capable of sorting through our thoughts and picking out the ones we feed our energy and attention to. Start thinking of your thought selection the same way you think of choosing anything else. From the moment you wake up each morning you are faced with a variety of choices to make. You decide to shower, you pick out clothes, and you decide what to eat for breakfast. So how do you know which thoughts to give your attention to?
 
Try engaging in this 2-minute practice. Find a calm mind and a comfortable and relaxed seated position.  With a clear head, repeat to yourself 3 times, “be careful, be careful, be careful”. Notice how you feel as you repeat this. Chances are, you feel a tightness in your chest, a shallowness in your breathing, and an overall heaviness.
 
Now, say to yourself 3 times, “I’m carefree, I’m carefree, I’m carefree”. How do you feel? Most likely, you feel that heaviness dissolve and feel a sense of openness and expansion in the body.
 
As you practice your thought selection, notice which thoughts make you feel the sensations you experienced with the “be careful” mantra. Try and avoid feeding those thoughts and focus more on the ones that create a feeling of expansion and space in the body.
 
Control makes us rigid and tight and narrows our perspective. We can monitor our moment-to-moment surrender to life by watching the inner sensations of contraction and expansion. Try to embrace the expansive thoughts and find yourself in the flow of surrender.