When You Need to Stop Thinking Negative Thoughts

You are not your thoughts. Your thoughts are a pathway you are choosing to walk down; a mental pathway that can be beautiful like a stroll through a park or dingy like a smelly alleyway. If you don’t enjoy where you walk with your feet, would you not turn directions? Why no so with your mind? Catch yourself thinking down a dirty scary wormhole in your brain and you can almost immediately change course and skip through flowery mental meadows. I’m not suggesting we avoid walking through grief, trauma, sadness or pain. I’m talking about the unhelpful, rotting, festering thoughts of doubt, fear and self-loathing; the thoughts we feel shame for thinking. The thoughts you wouldn’t dare speak to another human. We reassure our friends it’s good for them to go through the pain but it is not good for them to go through post failure self-flagellation. Love. Think thoughts that are loving. Sometimes love is tough love but it is never causing more hurt in a downward spiral. Love can push us through ourselves, painfully like splinters pushing through skin, working their way out. Love doesn’t push the splinter back in, deeper. In your mind, are you walking down a path of beautiful trees or rotting garbage? These paths ARE NOT YOU. They do no exist inside you. Mental paths exist outside of us and we meet on them. We all have the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same kinds of ideas. We get so excited when someone discovered a new path and tells us about it; when a genius see the forest in a new way and suggests that we walk in a new direction that in unexplored. There are no new ideas. There are no new parts of the forest. There are just new pathways we carve through it. This reality we live in has many layers; physical layers we walk through, invisible layers we think through. In conversation, we can walk down a pathway together and we can lead each other down dark dangerous roads. Why are you leading yourself or others down roads that are not beautiful, enjoyable, inspiring or peaceful? Why do you continue to walk down the same ugly path everyday; a path that is full of rocks that cut your feet, branches that block your steps, mean animals that keep pooping on you or snarling in the bushes. Your strong spirit and resilience will help you survive these dark roads when you must pass through them in life, but you certainly do not need to condemn yourself to a life lived entirely in these spaces. Choose the beautiful paths as your default. Fill up on good vibes from the beautiful landscapes and restore your energy so you can handle the dark turns. You are not your thoughts. Watch them. Choose them. Turn them off. Feel your body and how it reacts to your thoughts…the same way it reacts as you walk through the physical world we share. Your hair stands on end and your chest feels tight when you walk in the shady parts of town….and when you are thinking shady thoughts. Your thoughts are fluid and fleeting and they have physical impacts if you allow them to take root; stress that leads to disease that leads to the end of your fucking life and happiness. So, how would you like to spend your life as an artist? You are creative and capable. Where are you going to walk with your mind? Where you walk is the landscape that will inspire the art you’re creating. I see a lot of skulls and dragons at EDM concerts. Death death, bass in the face! After Bass Canyon, I was worn out and inspired from the darkness. It’s a powerful place to explore. I can hang out there but three neck breaking days in the desert was enough for me this summer. Now, I’m back at home waking up early to go swimming in the lake each morning, laying in the grass beneath the glowing green trees. This lake-side-start to my morning this week has filled me with beauty, peace, happiness and strength each day. I’m physically putting myself in a location that feels good and leads to more good feelings. When I’m lying in the grass, it’s easier to fill my mind with equally beautiful thoughts. I’m choosing where I’m putting my body and where I’m putting my mind. It’s all choice. In every single moment, you may choose life or death, light or darkness, left or right, this pathway or that pathway. You are not your thoughts. They are pathways, wormholes, train tracks you explore for a moment. Collect something from those paths, use them, travel them as routes to new places and then get off the fucking path and once again just BE. Being in the moment in very important because it’s only here that anything can be experienced, enjoyed, and changed. Do you enjoy where you are physically spending time? Are you putting yourself in the park or the smelly alleyway? Do you enjoy where you are mentally spending your time? Are you thinking uplifting, encouraging helpful thoughts or are you thinking thoughts that are beating you up inside worse than you’ve ever been beaten up on the outside? Choices my love. You have them always. You are so powerful. Use your power. Change your mind. Walk your feet and your mind in a new direction.