Stressful thoughts...

There are several people writing books about stressful thinking and how it affects us -  Byron Katie, Don Miguel Ruiz, Marianne Williamson to name a few.  I do believe that a lot of the suffering we go through is because of our thinking.  I'm guessing that negative thinking developed as a survival mechanism in the distant past of humans so that we could anticipate and guard against possible threats to our survival.  Some of us who had difficult times growing up developed the habit of negative thinking on a personal level as a survival tool.  The trouble is that that was then, and this is now and all that negative thinking about all the possible horrible things that could happen mostly just makes us miserable.  Beyond sensible precautions against disaster, negative thinking doesn't help.  It's called "stinkin' thinkin'" in recovery programs.

Have you ever noticed that your thoughts just arise from some mysterious place - that you don't actually direct your own thinking?  Scary isn't it.  Where does it come from?  I don't know - it really is a mystery to me.  BUT, the good news is that I CAN direct my second thought.  I can choose to think the opposite of the stressful thought.  Why not?  Since I can't know for sure which is true, I might as well think of positive things and outcomes.  When my dear husband's severe health problems landed him in intensive care - which happened many times - my first thoughts were fears that he would die.  But I soon learned that it was at least as likely that he would survive and thrive.  So I chose my second thought to believe that instead.  I certainly was right many, many times and got to skip all the fear and misery that my first thoughts would have caused.