As I mentioned in my last post, I recently subscribed to a website called mythoughtcoach.com . The site features a series of audio recordings by a woman named Stin who talks you through daily affirmations and meditations. The exercises are geared toward helping one achieve personal and emotional goals using the power of one's brain and positive thought.
One of the exercises that intrigues me is something Stin calls the "three second rule." According to Stin's blog (which you can link to from the mythoughtcoach.com website), "when you have a thought about anything that you have previously experienced with ANY sort of emotion or physical response, it takes about 3 seconds for that thought to initiate a physical response. That thought then becomes the trigger for a remarkable physiological process." So following the "three second rule", when you have a negative thought or emotion, don't allow yourself to dwell on it for more than three seconds; instead, change your thinking to thoughts of gratitude or a memory of something positive... basically, go to your happy place.
Yesterday, I read a post from a blog one of my friends follows and I saw something that kind of disturbed me as it was a comment encouraging someone to break the three second rule. A commenter of the blog I was reading said, "I feel like you leave some of the negative issues [about your life] off of your blog...how come?" In response, the blogger wrote that she tends to have a positive, upbeat outlook on life, and she knows that she has the choice to have a happy and energetic attitude each day when she wakes up, and that's what she chooses to do. Awesome, right?! The blogger proceeds to outline the trials she is dealing with in her life right now, some of them being health issues and money worries, etc., etc., etc.
I have not always been the kind of person who wakes up every morning with the knowledge that I can choose to be happy. I have struggled, like many people, with feelings of anger and doubt and frustration and loneliness, and sometimes those emotions have gotten the better of me and I've given into them and let them control my whole day... sometimes my whole week or month. And that's something I am working on changing in my life. That's why I use the tools provided by mythoughtcoach.com; that's why I do daily affirmations and meditations that I think will help me through certain days or obstacles or hardships. So I guess what disturbed me and upset me about reading someone's comment to this generally happy person is that somewhere out there, there is this person who does have all these issues, like many people, who already has the knowledge that it is a choice whether or not we let the negative things that happen in our life get to us... and she chooses happiness. So if she dwells on the negative things by spending 20 minutes or an hour writing them in a blog, doesn't that weaken this foundation she's built of being a happy, positive person? Sure, there's something to be said about getting things out when you're angry or unhappy or sad, but as Stin says, "You can’t always choose which thoughts will pop into your mind, but you can certainly choose which will get to stay longer than 3 seconds." I know we all have to vent somehow, but if this person has found ways to do that without writing about it to the world, even if they are her faithful readers, more power to her. I aspire to be like her. I aspire to be a happier, more positive person... I aspire to wake up every morning and choose this way of being no matter how I feel when my eyes first open... I aspire to uphold the three second rule.
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