This was something I heard while listening to one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Gabby Bernstein. When you get a negative or fearful thought, “Be Curious.” Ask that thought what they want to teach you, what are you nagging me about? What do I do with you? – hahaha, that was my add-lib!.
We often get stuck in our negative thinking loops and fear thoughts, oh my god, especially these last two years! How do we get rid of them and shut the door forever, one of Gabby’s students asked. And she replied – “Be Curious.”
I thought that was such an interesting response. And I actually am taking the time to think about this and using this myself. We so often can get in these negative thinking spirals and we can scare the ever living daylights out of ourselves! Guilty as charged!
But, the great news is there are so many tools to help us rid ourselves of these. I don’t know that we will forever banish negative thoughts from our brains – god, one could only hope! I do however, feel that we can learn to manage them better and perhaps get to 80/20 or even 90/10!
So, when those negative thoughts about our body image, our financial situations, our health, what is going on the world appear – what do you do? Probably like most of us you let them take you down a rabbit hole and then we binge watch our favorite TV series or we have a few cocktails, or however else we self-soothe. We oftentimes can’t sleep, we think of the worst case-scenarios when those most times don’t ever happen.
Why do we do this to ourselves when feeding ourselves positive thoughts, “best case outcomes” and “what if it was this or something better” thoughts would make us feel better? I don’t know, I think it’s programming from so many places – our parents, the media loves to feed off negativity and hence so many folks just talk about negative things.
I guess using Gabby Bernstein’s idea of “Be Curious” is an easy tool to add to our tool box of positive affirmations, mantra’s and meditations.
What if I don’t get the job? Then what? Be Curious – what if you got a better /different job that you loved more and paid better.
What if he/she doesn’t like me and we break up? Be Curious – so what if they do? would we die? probably not. Would it hurt? yes, but could we possibly meet someone that is actually better for us? YES!
What if I go broke while trying to start a business? Be Curious – okay, then what? you go find a job and then start again? start some other business? Is that the worst thing that could happen? No!
I used these “what if” scenarios many times before and I guess Gabby’s “Be Curious” fits right into it.
I would love to know how this tool works for YOU. Please feel free to share! In the meantime, BE CURIOUS!
Kimberley
Photo by Josh Mills on Unsplash
