On planting mental seeds vs mental weeds

Imagine if you had a vegetable garden and were growing tomatoes, carrots,

zucchini, and other delicious fruits and vegetables, then just as your plants

started to show signs of life, you jump in there and start planting some weeds.

Yep.

I said, weeds, the results wouldn't be great, but this is

exactly what we do in our minds.

We spend time cultivating a sense of calm and productivity with meditation

and all these apps that we have.

Then we throw in some mental weeds today.

I'm gonna be talking to you about how to keep your mind free of these mental weeds

and negative and destructive thought.

I'm amid Ahmed and welcome to be.

Well do well.

So before we get started, I'd like to discuss a little bit about why

we even have negative thoughts.

You need to know that this is completely natural.

It's human, and we all have, what's referred to in Buddhism as a monkey mind,

we have a monkey mind inside all of us.

This monkey mind jumps around and gets distracted and usually doesn't really

have any control until we do things that help us get into control like meditation.

So the first point I wanna discuss is that meditation itself is a really, really

powerful way to be able to control your mind and to be able to calm those negative

thoughts and those destructive thoughts.

Meditation doesn't have to be you sitting in a Lotus position on a meditation pillow

or out in a field by yourself for hours.

Meditation can be just you sitting in your car after you drop your kids off to

school, , just sit for a few minutes in silence and just observe your thought.

one thing that a lot of people think is that meditation is to calm your

mind and to control your thoughts.

In fact, it's the opposite where meditation allows you to get

in control of your thoughts.

I've got a number of apps that I use for meditating.

I've tried Headspace in the past right now, we're using an app called

calm and they have daily meditations.

And they're really, really good.

I'm not being endorsed to say this, but calm is , definitely

one of my favorite apps.

Another one that I really enjoy is called smiling mind.

Calm has a subscription cost to it.

Whereas smiling mind is entirely free and smiling mind has meditations for

different kinds of professionals.

If you're a teacher or a first responder or an entrepreneur, they have

different meditations for those as well.

The second way to get rid of these negative thoughts is to

actually ignore them and just reframe the way you see things.

So for example imagine you're driving down the highway and everything is fine.

And there's traffic flowing in both directions, everything seems okay.

And then somebody cuts you off in traffic abruptly.

Now you're probably gonna get quite upset and aggravated about it.

So one option is for you to get angry and to respond.

Maybe show them a finger or do, or the other option is to reframe it.

You could either think that this person was just being rude and cut

you off and being inconsiderate or the alternative is maybe they had a baby in

the backseat and the baby was choking.

And the person, the mom maybe had to quickly get into the shoulder

lane and in doing so cut you off.

Now, when you think of the ladder and you think of somebody cutting

you off and you get upset about it.

Well, if you knew that it was because the person didn't have a choice

or they were trying to save their baby, you probably wouldn't get as.

so here's an exercise next time you feel these negative thoughts coming on,

what you can do is you can actually make up a silly and ideally compassionate

story about why that happened.

If you have a child that's vying for your attention while you're trying to

work, rather than getting upset, you can make up a story about what it is.

Maybe they drop something on their toe and they are in pain, or

maybe something happened at school.

And they're just embarrassed to tell you, and they're just looking for a.

so when something comes up and you feel these negative thoughts, try

to make up another story about why that could have happened, that may

assist you in not feeling so negative.

The third and final idea is to actually spend time with people

that are just really positive.

You know, there's those people out there that are just extremely

optimistic and it's really hard for anything to bother them.

A quick story here, we were looking for a bite to eat for lunch and our

kids love to have McDonald's fries.

And so we went to McDonald's and we are in a new city.

We're traveling.

We, didn't speak the language.

And when we got to the front hill, we ordered.

We ended up getting our order back, but it was incorrect.

There were some wrong items in our order and they missed a few things.

Well, there was a big lineup of people behind me and the guys

that were working at the counter actually were really, really calm.

And I was actually really impressed that they had such composure, even

with all these people yelling at them lights, the sounds beeping around them.

They just maintained their composure.

It was really quite impressive.

So 0.3 is to spend time.

People that are extremely optimistic, positive.

And also I should mention calm.

Now here's a quick little challenge for you.

Meditating has made a huge difference in my life.

I've been meditating now for, I think about 250 days consecutively without

stopping many, many days before that, but 250 days now without missing a single day.

So my challenge to you is to pick a time either morning or evening, and set a timer

on your watch or your phone for three.

And during that three minutes, you're just gonna sit close your

eyes and just observe no need to try any fancy meditation techniques.

No need to sit in a lot.

Disposition.

Hands can be on your lap.

Just sit comfortably.

Comfort is key.

So, what I want you to do is pick time either morning or afternoon or evening,

and just three minutes of meditation this week, seven days straight.

If you are successful, I think you'll notice a big

change if you're unsuccessful.

Well, there's no failure.

It's only you either succeed or you learn.

So notice what didn't work.

Well, maybe it was the timing.

Wasn't right.

Maybe you didn't have the same time set every day of the week.

But try three minutes a day this week for the next seven days.

And I'd love to hear how your experience was.

Send me a quick message.

So to recap, here are the three things that you can do to prevent

mental weeds and destructive thoughts from taking over your mind.

Number one, like I mentioned is meditation.

Number two is make up a story, a compassionate story about why

something happened that upset you.

And number three is surround yourself with really positive people.

Now, if you can't find positive people around you immediately

watch a really funny movie.

One of my favorite movies is life is beautiful.

And in that movie, there is some serious.

Serious positivity.

So I think you're gonna enjoy that in tomorrow's episode,

I'm going to be talking about revenge, bedtime, procrastination.

This probably explains why you feel tired all the time, and I'm gonna share some

tips and tricks as to how you can overcome revenge, bedtime, procrastination.

I hope this has been helpful, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Have an awesome day.