Having bad thoughts about myslef. Me.

Many of us struggle with disturbing, intrusive thoughts that come uninvited during unwelcome hours. They prevent us from focusing on the task at hand, cause mental agony and at times even make us wonder whether we are in the grip of a dreadful disease. The Mind is a faculty of ours that gathers data through our five sense organs based on our experiences since the day we are born - all the events that took place and our impressions of them, our experiences and how we felt during those experiences, the books we read, the movies we watched, etc. A part of the Mind referred to as the Intellect, makes judgments about ourselves and the world based on the data collected by the Mind. Our home environment - our parents, siblings, grandparents, relatives and our interactions with them, things we learnt and observed at home, our school environment - our teachers, classmates, our work environment, our colleagues - everyone and everything influence the data collected by the mind and thereby judgments made by the intellect. From time to time, a piece of data is randomly picked from this data bank and brought to our attention, which is referred to as a Thought. The nature of the thought that comes to you, i.e., which thought should come when - this is something that is not within your control. Hence, while you are at school or at work, you may have thoughts about home and vice versa. While you are sitting down to study, or work on a project, you may have thoughts about a movie or a game you watched last week, and so on. Thoughts appear like clouds passing in the sky. When a certain kind of thought flashes across your mind screen, you have the choice to let it go by just observing it - without judging it, labeling it or reacting to it. When you repeatedly do this, your brain interprets it as - this data is no longer important to you and gradually, such thoughts will decrease in frequency. On the other hand, if you identify with that thought - believe it to be true, be one with it, and keep entertaining it - your brain interprets it as - this kind of data is important to you and hence thoughts based on all the associated data are brought to your attention. When you repeatedly focus on a thought(s), the corresponding emotion rises in your brain. It hijacks your capability to think logically and rationally and you become overpowered by the emotion. This can bring forth a new stream of thoughts, and the cycle repeats. You become a prisoner of your own thoughts and emotions. Look at the clothes you are wearing right now. Do they represent you in your entirety? Are your clothes You? But, they are yours. See the difference? When your clothes get dirty, does this mean you have become dirty? What you can do is change into clean clothes and wash the soiled ones. Similarly, the Mind is yours. Thoughts are yes, yours. But they are not you. Just because you experience thoughts of a violent nature, you are not violent. Just because you experience sad thoughts, you need not be sad. You have the power to choose which thought you wish to focus on and act on. You have the power to exercise this choice each and every time you experience thoughts. Understand that those thoughts that plague you, disturb you, cause agony to you from time to time come to you only because something happened in the past and left a deep impression on you. Ask yourself, is it still relevant today? Am I clinging to the past and refusing to move on? When time has passed and life is bringing me new choices today, am I turning my face to it only because of some random incident that happened in the past? When elephants are young, they put chains around their feet. The elephant grows up thinking that it is in captivity and cannot break free because it is chained. When it grows older, it can easily break from the chains, but does not do so because of conditioning. Similarly, negative thoughts and beliefs are the chains we believe to be holding us captive when actually, we are absolutely free. As you consciously feed your Mind healthy, positive, inspiring, motivational content - whether it is the books you choose to read, the websites you choose to visit, the friends you choose to hang out with, the words you choose to speak about yourself and others - new thinking patterns develop, you explore new ways to respond to situations, the world responds to a new you, the feedback you receive from the world changes - and the cycle repeats. A beautiful future awaits you - You CAN. You MUST.