The muscle of thought (and a strengthening exerise)

If thought had a muscle, we would say that it was strong, well nourished, and healthy, once we had learned the art of being happy.  What do I mean by that? Well, if we know how to properly manage our thoughts and understandings, we’ll be able to life that excess “weight” from our lives, we can overcome the “blows” from daily life, we’ll have the energy to move with grace and agility through the waves of difficulty.  We’ll even be able to jovially joke about our adversity, with a smile on our faces.

That being said, we can deduce that someone with weak and poorly nourished thinking will be inflexible, ill-tempered, and will lack creativity; they will be unable to move through life with humor, strength, and ingenuity.   

So: it is fairly easy to detect either weak or strong thinking.  To measure a man’s strength, we use that wonderful machine that – I don’t remember its specific name – you use a hammer to strike down on a ramp, and send a ball flying up that measures, and delineates the amount of strength that said man discharged in his hit.

So, our measure will be on a scale from 1 to 10.  The strike that you must make, is to answer just one question: how would you rate your level of deep pleasure in life?  Your answer will represent the strength of your thinking.

You must be very honest in your thinking.  In order to begin strengthening this muscle, you must first clearly determine where you truly feel satisfied and fulfilled, and where you don’t.  Remember, you can always fool the outside world with an infinite amount of words and opinions, but the only people who truly know how satisfied we are with our results, are ourselves.

The power of thought

Okay.  So once you know how strong your thinking is, you must understand very well the meaning of the word strength.  So write down these three words: flexibility, understanding, and consciousness.  The more you have developed these three virtues, the more it can be said that you will have “volume and strength” in your thinking.

The truth is, there are lots of machines and exercises in our own little mental gym.  But there’s not way we can go through each one of them in such a short article like this one.  So here, we will talk about one of the most common and most used exercises by man that have strengthened thinking.  These people have become truly amazing and outstanding people in every respect.  They are known as people will powerful minds.

This exercise helps promote flexible thinking.  It is called “I’m strong when I yield”.  

In this exercise you must understand that being strong is not synonymous with screaming, forcing, ordering, or resisting being in the wrong.  Being flexible in your thinking means that you give yourself permission to move towards new options.  You consider and even resign when necessary, without feeling like you’re “losing something”.

We are frequently blocked from growing into greater realities because we don’t allow ourselves to explore and consider.  We lock ourselves up under certain points of view.  We think life only functions in certain ways, or under the limited results that this rigid thinking produces.

This exercise consists of recognizing situations in which you cling to something, or when you don’t want to listen to someone because what they have to say makes you so angry.  This applies to when you don’t want to experience something new, even when the things you have tried haven’t worked for you.  But, to simplify this exercise even more, we’ll focus solely on the situations that make you mad just by listening to what someone has to say.

So every time you feel yourself getting heated up because someone says something you don’t agree with, you must stop your resistance to listening, and that you simply let the words pass by your ears, whether what they say is right or not.  You mus avoid defending yourself at all costs.  Do not run, yell, or object.  Simply say: Thanks.  I’ll think about that, and take that into consideration.

Yes, this is really hard!  The exercise makes you stretch your will to the max.  Your goal should be to listen though.  Just listen to what you don’t like hearing.

If you try it and have patience – even if you loose your patience the first few times – even if you flat out run away the first few times – keep trying to just let the words flow through your ears.  Little by little you will begin to experience a special sense of power.  This feeling will make you feel, even if you don’t believe it, more secure and confident in yourself.

But why does this happen?  Because one of the ways to exercise a strong thought is to learn to resist other peoples’ current.  This isn’t a tense resistance, that you later run to a neighbor and friend to divulge everything that they told you.  No, doing that speaks directly of your own weakness.

This is about learning to move with other peoples’ current without feeling lost or taken over by them.  This means learning to move with understanding, knowing that if someone else is wrong, you just discard their thoughts or opinions.  And if someone IS right, you must then be humble enough to accept that truth, recognize and value what they have to say.  This is about leaving that wall behind that makes you rigid in life, and about lowering your defenses because you know that you won’t lose anything by simply listening impersonally to others.  This means knowing that the words that truly move in your heart, are the ones that truly matter.

This exercise is truly enormous in beginning to strengthen your thinking and maturing your emotions intelligently.

Revised by: Dra. Loredana Lunadei on 02/09/2019

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