My first discovery in my journey into mindfulness.

The first time I read about mindfulness and decided to engage in it, I noticed many things about myself in an hour that didn't in months. It was both an eye-opening and scary experience. I took a back-seat and played a third person character in my head and I could "see" all my thoughts in front of me. All of them. I practiced it for a week and after seeing the results, I made the decision to practice I go the rest of my life. I am still yet to regret ming that decision and I don't think I ever will.

Below are some of my findings:

Majority of our thoughts are influenced by what we see from the external environment. In fact this is the layer from which all other thoughts spring. From birth, what we perceive through our senses and how we interpret them make up a very large part of who we are. It is said that the quality of a man equals the quality of his thoughts.

In my generation, since most youths spend a large amount of their time on their gadgets at the same time being oblivious to their surroundings, affect the way they think which in extension affects their lives. I used to be very addicted to social media, I binge watch Facebook reels and videos, YouTube shorts and whatnot. I could spend hours doing that and I noticed that my thoughts were affected too in a way I can't explain. Our sense organs are windows to our brain, heart, and soul so be careful what you watch!

Of the thoughts that I watched, I am able to identify three : fleeting thoughts, recurring thoughts, chain thoughts. These are terms I gave them myself. I don't doubt the possibility that there is a more advanced study about this.

Fleeting thoughts are those that use the mind as some sort of window for their passage. I am still yet to understand how they come up because they are never really thoight up, they come on their own and pass as quickly as they come. While most of these fleeting thoughts have little or no substance to them, some of them can lay a solid foundation for some serious critical thinking if you're fast enough to grasp them.

Recurrent thoughts are thoughts that keep on repeating themselves and in my case, most of my recurrent thoughts were due to unpleasant past experiences. Some of these thoughts come when I feel distressed while others come when I wake up, or just randomly. Recurrent thoughts, as the name imply, keep on repeating on your head until they become part of your life. The more they repeat in your head the deeper they become ingrained into your mind, too bad if your recurrent thoughts are negative. They are one of the most difficult thoughts to change. It goes far beyond just mindset, it's like something you grow up with an letting it go is like letting a part of yourself go, all the better it is negative.

Chain thoughts are group of thoughts that spring from other thoughts and they in turn give rise to other thoughts. Chain thoughts aren't necessarily carefully thought out, they to can happen on their own. Our brains follow pathways we adapt them with and connect thought after thought on their own. It doesn't necessarily require our effort.

If only we know fully how our brains work, we would be more careful with what we allow into our brains via our senses. Destructive thoughts spring from experiences and once our bad experiences start influencing our thoughts, it can destroy us if we do it for too long. A lot of us have a lot of junk in our heads, we often feel tired without doing much, feel hungry unnecessarily. Have you ever take a step back to examine th garbage that's in your heads?

Thanks for reading.

Yours Layly,

❤️❤️❤️