RUNNING OLD PATTERNS

Remember this absolutely crucial point: you are not your thinking.

Your thinking is often just habitual, an almost mechanical reaction to your life circumstances. Usually you think like you have thought in the past. Mind/body guru Dr. Deepak Chopra reports an amazing statistic about the power of habitual thinking. He says that research has proven that the average person has around 60,000–70,000 thoughts a day, which is pretty amazing, but the even more extraordinary fact is that around 70 percent of those thoughts are the same ones you had yesterday!

You believe that you’re thinking new thoughts, but really you’re largely just running the same thoughts over and over again in your head. What passes for original, fresh thinking is often just mechanical, highly conditioned thinking. This is only a problem if those regular thoughts are pulling you down, making you feel disempowered, or keeping you from taking action. Sadly, this is very often the case.