What are you thinking about right now? What did you think of when you opened your eyes this morning?  What kind of thoughts did you have in response to hurricane Ophelia?  Were your thoughts calm? Worried? Did you create an inner hurricane? Do you know that your inner thoughts create your external reality? Ok, I promise, no more questions!  Most people believe that their external reality creates their inner thoughts; they are in a reactive rather than responsive state. When we are in a reactive state we can feel powerless, anxious and our behavior can feel out of control.

Your subconscious mind does not know the difference between your imagination and reality and this can work for you in many positive ways in the form of placebo; people who take a sugar pill as an anti-depressant and genuinely feel better or in a negative way known as the nocebo. The nocebo is an unintentional way of harming ourselves where we believe that something bad is going to happen, like getting sick and we actually then condition our bodies to deliver this response. The problem is that most of the time we are not even aware of the effect that our negative thoughts have on us physically or the toxic energy they create around us.

In 1962 a group of researchers carried out a nocebo study in Japan on 13 children, not very ethical you might think, but it was 1962!  These children were all highly allergic to poison ivy. A harmless leaf was rubbed on one of each of the children’s forearms and they were told that this arm had been rubbed with poison ivy. The other arm was rubbed with poison ivy but they were told it was a harmless leaf.  Of the 13 children, all developed a rash on the arm that was rubbed with the harmless leaf and 11 of them developed no rash at all on the arm that had been exposed to the poison ivy!  This astounding study illustrated that the children sent unintentional subconscious orders to the autonomic nervous system and as a result created the rash by mere thought alone.  They expected the rash to develop and so it did.

In my work, clients who are making good progress can sometimes feel that if they have a negative thought they have somehow failed or that all of the progress they have made is now redundant.  It is so important and crucial to have a positive relationship with any negative thoughts that may arise – the relationship to that thought is key.  Standing back, observing the thought and showing kindness towards your thought, not believing it and letting it go are all part of the process of shifting from a negative state of mind to a positive one.

This week, if and when a negative thought pops into your mind, hold that thought in gentle and kind awareness, be patient with yourself, be kind to the thought and notice how it will slowly start to fade.  After all, one thought is not a book.

And in honor of Ophelia, I thought I would end with a Shakespeare quote from Hamlet  that sums up the theme for this week’s post:

“There is nothing either good or bad,  but thinking makes it so”

Thanks for reading as always and also for all the positive feedback and support. I will share my recent TEDx video with you when it goes live.

Please do help the blog to continue to grow by sharing it with your network. The more positivity we can spread in this world the better!