The 365 Commitment

Day 309 – Thought Control

Excuse the crazy analogy – but your mind is like your kitchen counter. It is always good to enter your kitchen with a clean, clutter free counter. If you prepare a meal, you will use that counter to put out ingredients, dishes and other needed items for cooking. When you are done, it is best to clear that counter, clean the dishes, put away the ingredients or throw away anything no longer needed. You once again return to a clean counter top. That is the best way to enter and leave the kitchen, with a clean clutter free counter top.

However, when yourself or other people leave out dirty dishes, forget to wipe the counter down and leave out ingredients that counter becomes cluttered, dirty, and very difficult to deal with. It takes a significant amount of effort to clear the counter and by that time you have given up on doing anything productive in your kitchen, such as prepare a healthy meal.

This is how we can view our minds. Thoughts are the dishes and ingredients of our meals. They are absolutely necessary to plan or prepare for an important goal in your life. If you want to accomplish something, it is always a good idea to get your thoughts out and start to arrange and organize them. Follow a recipe if necessary, but as you get better you can just throw a pinch of this or a dash of that and voila a masterpiece. It is best that when you are done with a task, or the day for that matter, to put your thoughts away. Put them back where they belong, keep them nicely organized for the next time you need them to prepare.

Here is lies the problem. We have little thought control. We leave these thoughts hanging out in our minds (the kitchen counter) after we are done and they start to stack up (like dishes) until our kitchen (our life) is a disorganized mess. We cannot get anything done because we are overwhelmed with thoughts. I think successful, healthy living has a lot to do with mindfulness – having an awareness of our thoughts with some practiced ability to control them. Use thoughts when needed, put them away when not needed. Thought control.

Guy Reams (309)
365 Member

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