Use Your Witness to Prevent Mental Weeds

Question 1

If you become aware of your judgment and emotional distractions, you will gain much needed control over your life

Answer 1

Your mental chatter is less able to take you down distructive paths when you consciously become aware of it.

Question 2

Think of the false realities you carry around with you every day.

Answer 2

Attempts to stop your mental chatter are fruitless. Redirect it instead. You can influence what your mind brings forth.

Question 3

Your mind is like a fertile plot. It will nurture growth. You cant stop it. But, you can influence what it brings forth.

If you plant vegetables in neat rows, pluck out the weeds when they thrust their heads above ground, keep out stray animals, and so on, you will find yourself with a profusion of healthy vegetables.

Answer 3

You will find such plentitude that you can freely give it away. Your abundance will sustain many. Your life can be like that fertile plot of land. It all starts with your mind.

Question 4

How do you prevent weeds from entrenching themselves in your garden? How do you prevent yourself from being swept away by windstorms of dispair and gusts of exultation?

Answer 4

You use a tool called ‘awareness’. When you become conscious of what you permit to germinate inside you, something amazing happens. Almost effortlessly, the weeds in your life will wither simply by exposing them to the light of awareness.

Question 5

Cultivate your witness. You’ll probably find it convenient to think of the witness as a person–like SuperDad SmileHeart…or Cocky PowerBro.

You will never have a truer friend or one who will do you more good.

Answer 5

Your witness knows and shows you all the ways you frustrate yourself and act in a self defeating ways. Use the witness to identify and avoid the behaviours that are your own worst enemies.

Question 6

Using your witness, you can gradually get to the point where you control what you are consciously comfortable with letting into your mind.

Answer 6

Pick one day and commit to doing all activities deliberately and unhurriedly. Focus intently on whatever you were doing. No multitasking.

Question 7

Each time your mental chatter carries you away, gently detach yourself and come back to the task at hand. Breathe slowly, deeply and evenly–try to get to 12 breaths per minute or slower.

Answer 7

This is especially important when you are speaking with someone. Do not get involved with your mental chatter.

Question 8

Imagine, vividly, that your life is like an hour glass. The sand above represents all the things you have to do, all the things that are pressing on you for your attention. No matter how much you shake and agitate the hourglass, only one grain of sand goes through the narrow neck. That is the task at hand.

Answer 8

Bring focus to all your activities. If you succeed you will achieve a powerful level of personal mastery. You will get more done with less stress.

Question 9

Keeping awareness and your witness will prevent you from daydreaming.

Answer 9

Protect your mind with the same ferocity as you protect your body. Be mindful of what you let in.

Question 10

Allow content to enter your brain that leaves you relaxed w a sense of peace, joy. Do not let content in that leaves you hyped up, strung out, breathing fast.

Answer 10

The witness is your guard. Pay attention to your witness. Observation accomplishes what force cannot. The witness is a remarkable pacifier. Being aware of what you are doing brings change of its own volition.

Question 11

Dont let others dictate how you will behave. Take a deep breath and view it as an opportunity to grow.

Answer 11

Very frequently you lose the witness. Find him every time you realize he is gone.

Question 12

I spent years bashing my head against the uncaring and decidedly unbenevolent Universe before I started doing the exercises in this book. The results came so fast that I shook my head in disbelief and did them more seriously.

Answer 12

I discovered another world did exist. It always had.

Question 13

The universe wants to give you what you desire. You can influence it.

Answer 13

The law of increase says: whatever you are truly grateful for and appreciate will increase in your life.

Question 14

The universe is a conscious entity–it is intimately intertwined with you. So, what you do immediately influences what comes back to you.

Answer 14

List what you are truly grateful for and appreciate it.

Question 15

Think of your life as two hungry dogs.

The first is kind and gentle, the other disruptive and prone to violent attacks.

You have a finite amount of food and can feed only one of the beasts.

Answer 15

If you are like most of us, you will feed the demanding one, the one you want to pacify most. The one you are most afraid of.

Now, which dog do you think will grow stronger? Don’t feed the beast!

Focus on what is right in your life and almost totally ignore what is not.

Question 16

Be grateful for your network of relationships, your mental facilities, your family, your business.

Answer 16

Broadcast your gratitude out as a silent statement of who you are. Whatever you are truly grateful for and appreciate will increase in your life. The timing is very important – – it should be the last thing you do at night.

Question 17

Let feelings of gratitude take hold of you many times during the day.

Answer 17

It is easier to hold your feeling of gratitude if you use your body. Smile, smile, smile. Smile with your heart.

Question 18

When you interact with someone, even if it is a casual exchange, wish that person every happiness possible.

Answer 18

Beam out peace and well being as if your life depended on it. Really look at the person to whom you are speaking. Observe the face, the expression, the body language. Wish him or her well silently. Sincerely.

Question 19

Note what your emotional tenor has been during the week when you beam out goodwill to others.

Did you find yourself greeting a new day with more joy than ever?

Answer 19

If others are carrying around anger, frustration, envy, and similar emotional burdens, feel compassion for their predicament.

Then it is easier to wish them well.

You are wishing them well but you are really doing this exercise for you.

Question 20

If you look for the miracles in your life you will find them in droves and you will soon start producing them effortlessly.

Answer 20

The problem is, because you dismiss this notion, most of the time you ensure that the exact opposite will happen.

Question 21

Don’t think of things as coincidences. Think of them as miracles. View the universe as working with you and it will produce more with time.

Answer 21

If you believe in this and truly smile with your heart, then suddenly everything clicks. When you see that happen, view it as a miracle and be grateful. More will come your way. If you create mental models full of gratitude, wonderment and joy you will find transformative, powerful results.

Question 22

Pay careful attention to such miracles. Especially recognize and acknowledge them. Write them down! List what happened, the date, and time. Permit yourself to feel elated and write down this feeling as well. Bathe in this feeling and feed that good dog, not the beast.

Answer 22

Mentally, play around with the possibility that these were not coincidences. That somehow the conscious universe was trying to make itself known to you. Help it do so by paying close attention. Gently, very, very gently try to make more such events happen.

Try it in small ways first when you go shopping expect to find the item you want will be on sale.when you go bowling expect that a particular frame, say the 10th, will be a strike. Do this all the time 40 or 50 times a day.

Question 23

There will be many, many times when you don’t get the results you desire. Ignore them. Don’t dwell on your disappointment. Acknowledge your mental chatter but simply let it pass. It is the equivalent of the forehands that you flub when learning to play tennis. Eventually it will all come together if you persist.

Answer 23

There will be a few occasions where you succeed. Celebrate these. Jot them down. Allow the joy to envelop you when it happens. Re live the joy by keeping and reviewing notes.

Question 24

By celebrating your success, you allow more of it to come into your life.

Answer 24

Gradually there will be a change in your thinking. As the number of instances multiplies, you will begin to wonder if they really are coincidences. You will begin to feel comfortable that the notion that the universe works in the manner described – – the moment this happens you’ll notice that the number of instances increases exponentially.

Question 25

Discard the model of frantic doing. You expend tremendous amount of energy and wind up in a place that you don’t really want to be in.

Answer 25

The results of frantic doing are counterproductive. You sink once more into that familiar feeling of being a gerbil in a cage, running on its wheel, getting nowhere. Quite possibly you feel this is the reality of life. It isn’t. Instead practice calm being.

Question 26

The world you live in is a reality you’ve constructed. When you change, the universe has no choice but to change in accordance with the person you’ve become.

Answer 26

Free your mind from thoughts based on desperate want and instead concentrate and be crystal clear on what you would like. Enumerate your values and how you would incorporate them into a dream job.

Express those values. Become explicit about how it would benefit the larger society. When you were truly clear on this, the job and the business flows into your life effortlessly with very little action on your part.