Changing The Channel

-Devlyn Steele

Jennifer woke up feeling rested and ready for her day. She went about her morning routine in a good mood and then it happened...she found herself in front of the mirror. Once in front of the mirror everything changed. She no longer was thinking about the day in front of her and what she was going to do. No, instead now all she could do is stare and her mood became negative. She stared and fussed and stared some more. Even after she left the mirror it is all she thought about and she just kept checking and staring. When she checked, yes it was still there, a pimple.

The irony is that Jennifer happened to be a very attractive woman, but now she thought that the pimple was all anyone else could see. That is how our minds often work, we get focused on a small thing and no longer can see the entire picture. The small event becomes our entire experience. A relationship can be 90% good, and yet we often only experience and live in the 10% that is not working. That one fight or thing that was said plays over and over in your mind and like the pimple it is all you see.

Reality is not what is happening, but what we are experiencing. In other words we create our reality by what we choose to focus on. I often use the idea of a television representing our thoughts. When we watch TV, it doesn't matter what is playing on another channel, we will only experience the show of the channel we choose to watch. The channel we watch is only one of endless possibilities of what we could be watching and what we could be experiencing. That is how our lives are as well. There are endless possibilities that we could focus on, but we get stuck watching negative channels that don't represent the entirety of our life.

We can change our experience in life without anything else changing other than where we place our  focus. In order to change our focus we literally need to change the channel of what we are watching in our heads. Like the pimple that consumes our thoughts, changing the focus is not as easy as we would want it to be. Unfortunately we do not have a remote that we can channel surf and pick the ones we like. Also, unlike a TV that we can turn off, our minds do not come with an on off switch. The only way to change what you are experiencing is to change the channel.

There are three effective ways to learn how to change the channel. The most effective way and where you want to end up is by choosing a positive channel. That is to focus on the positive realities of life of today, or a positive vision of where your life can develop and the things you need to do to make that happen. Although that is where you want your mind to be, often this is very difficult. Like the pimple, you just can't change the focus.

When you are stuck in a thought and cannot change the channel to a positive one, you need to overwhelm the thought. An effective tool to take back your thoughts is a mantra. Mantra is Sanskrit for mind tool because it is literally a tool for you to create peace in your mind. Mantras are commonly repeated words or phrases. You repeat these mantras out loud for as long as you need to. It might seem silly, but  would you rather be focused on a negative channel or a mantra? You will be amazed at the difference you can achieve in your attitude and experience as you learn how to use mantras.

Once you have achieved clearing your mind from a negative channel with a mantra, an effective method to transition to a positive channel is a grateful list. As life is what we think about, the negative channel erases the positive in your life from your mind. When you next repeat a grateful list out loud your focus changes and the positive of your life returns. From there to change the channel to where we started a positive reality of today or a vision that you can develop and what you need to do to create it becomes natural.

The more you use this process the faster you can learn to change the channel. Now the question will become not what are you stuck thinking about, but what channel you choose to watch. Change the channel and choose to watch channels that will create positive experiences in your life.