If you were given £70,000, what would you spend it on?
If you were given £70,000, what would you spend it on?Would you choose a great holiday destination, buy a car you like or pay off your debts to feel better?
If you got a windfall of £70.000 and were asked to spend it, you surely wouldn’t rush to a shop you hate, buy a new carpet in a terrible colour, get a new sofa in a design you hate and give some money to a charity you don’t believe in.
Would you?
Of course not. You would choose things that make you happy, lift your spirits and make you feel fulfilled.
Let’s replace the £70.000 with 70.000 thoughts.
That’s the number of thoughts an average person has on a daily basis.
Would you spend it on the person you hate, the upsetting situation you can’t change and would you repeat those time and again?
Tina struggled with moving on in her life. Her focus was mainly on past experiences with her ex. The pain was still there, while she tried to make sense of it all. Why did he say this, do that and treated her so badly? What had she done wrong? What could she have done differently? Could she get him back? Why did she feel like this? Did she still love him? Why did she fall for him in the first place? Why hadn’t she trusted her gut feeling? He had been unfaithful and she forgave him. He had been rude and diminished her and she let it go. He was kind to others, but not to her and she accepted it. And now she kept going over all those different scenarios. Again. She felt stuck and didn’t know how to get out of it. She also wondered if she really wanted to. Maybe she wanted to stay in this mental space until she had made sense of it.
Tina didn’t realise that she kept herself from growing as a person. She used all her mental energy going over the same stuff. Situations that were painful, a person who had treated her badly and unhappy feelings. Having the same thoughts meant she didn’t learn anything, she just kept feeling miserable.
How many of your 70.000 thoughts are spent on unpleasant situations, people you don’t like or things that make you unhappy?
How to get more value of your 70.000 thoughts
- Pick up a pen and paper – not a notebook or a phone and make a list of everything you spend your thoughts on which makes you unhappy. ‘The no joy for money’ equivalent.
- Then spend 10 minutes per topic and write about it. Scream (on paper), swear (on paper), kick (on paper) everything negative about it out of your head.
- Once you have done that – you don’t have to do it in one day, it can be a project – create a STOP sign in your head. It can be visual, a word or a sound.
- Every time you notice the topic is asking your mental energy, drags you into thinking about it, use your stop sign.
- Maybe you need another 10 minutes (see point 2) to free your mind up.
Mike Dooley (founder of the philosophical New Thought movement and best-selling author):
‘Thoughts become things. Choose the right ones.’
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