In the spirit of today's new moon of new beginnings and cycles, I wanted to share some thoughts that have been key to addressing and rebooting my own artistic and emotional blocks over the last year. Most of us already know that the brain can be trained, but what most of us don't catch is how intensely we're actually training negativity to grow into chronic anxiety or mental blocks without even realizing it.
“What I created isn't good.” “They're better than I will ever be.” “I can't do things right.” “I’m not an artist.”
Negative thoughts exist in us all, and are often so constant and sneaky they happen below our level of consciousness - just nasty little thoughts we let flow in the background of our minds. But there's something even sneakier happening; not only are these thoughts making you feel worse about whatever element of life you're stressed about, but they are very literally changing the structure of your brain... Neuroscience tells us that every thought we’ve ever had has it’s own neuropathway, which grows each time those thoughts travel it. Makes sense doesn’t it? Don't you get stuck in loops of the same anxieties or remembering the same bad events again and again? We are capable of creating literal highways in our mind for those negative thoughts to flow on if we let them go unchecked.
“Your Mind is a Garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.”
The answer to growing flowers instead of weeds? Simply recognizing you're in a negative mental loop is what can break the flow of them, giving you the simple but crucial moment to choose a different path for your thoughts to grow. It's an active waking meditation of training your mind as you go throughout your days that will result in an overall calmer and less anxious self.