When your mind is lost in thought or overthinking, it can create pressure and tension within your body. An overactive mind in the long term can lead you to feel stressed, anxious or depressed. Anxiety is when you think lots of fearful thoughts about the future. Depression is when you don’t want to feel at all and instead, push the feelings, (usually from the past), down or repress them within your energetic system. 

When you let go of your thoughts and relax your mind, it is possible to experience the instant joy and bliss of just being. When you are unaware of what you are thinking, it is possible to become a slave to your mind. An unobserved mind can keep you trapped in feelings of discontent with thoughts such as I can only be happy when I have achieved my future goals.

Letting go of your thoughts allows you to relax and be in the present moment. When you are present, beyond the stress of your thoughts, you can be happy right now. When you are not consumed by negative thinking, you are more likely to be aware of and experience the sun on your face or delicious softness of the couch supporting your body, for example.

When you go beyond the stress and tension that your mind can create, it feels amazing just to be in your body. When you learn to work with your mind and emotions, it is possible to be in a blissful state on a regular basis. Your racing mind can often carry you away; your thoughts can be so strong and powerful that, when unmonitored, you can find yourself in situations that create stress and unhappiness.
 

The state of your mind directly relates to the joy you experience in your relationships. Unconsciously, you can find yourself deep in thought, based on your conditioning (past experiences) that lead to seeing other people in a fearful way. In these situations, you aren’t seeing them as the divine and loving human beings they are, because your judgment is clouding how you see them. The good news is, that this can be a wonderful opportunity to work through any fear and connect with others with greater clarity.

If you are feeling stressed or unsettled, “What am I thinking now?†is a helpful question to ask yourself. Generally, it is your thoughts that are feeding the tension that you are experiencing and tension is a great indicator and opportunity to go beyond thinking and create a still, calm mind. If you unconsciously think negative thoughts or hold onto negative beliefs, tension in your body is a great indicator of this. If you feel tense and uptight, this is an excellent opportunity to practice finding your way back to peace.

To calm your mind, it is essential to redirect your attention to your body. Creating space and quiet time to go within can be helpful.

When your mind is racing, you can feel a lack of clarity or confusion. When you take the time to go within and observe your unsettled emotions until they pass—you will reconnect to your sense of inner peace and calm within.

How to create a calm mind:

1. Sit quietly and focus on your breath: take three deeps breaths to refocus your awareness to your inner body.
    
2. Direct your attention: firstly to your toes, then your ankles and so on up your body ascending all the way up to your head. This will deepen your meditation experience as it will further assist your mind in letting go of thinking and instead rest in a state of awareness. 
    
3. Take an overall snapshot of the body’s energy and observe any tension in a neutral, non-judgemental way, breathe into the tension allowing it to soften and diffuse.
    
4. You may find that in this space: also known as a state of presence, you become aware of the thoughts that have been fuelling the tension. A state of presence gives you the opportunity to change to thoughts that support you.
    
5. Connecting to Nature: getting out of indoors and going for a walk or sitting by water can automatically calm your mind and reconnect you to your sense of peace. This gives you space to hear your intuition (beyond stress, anxiety and depression) and make the best decisions for you. Grounding, that is lying on your back on the ground and looking up at the sky, is a very powerful way to calm your soul and connect with inner peace.
    
6. Focus on doing things that you love: things that feed your soul. Hobbies, your career, sports and spending time with people you love, can all get you “out of your head” and into your heart which is where your sense of well-being and contentment reside.
    

When you see other people from a state of presence, that is, clarity and love, it can facilitate them connecting to a place of presence within themselves.

What you are thinking is really important. If you are thinking unconscious fearful thoughts, you can make those fears come true if you think them often enough.

Working with your thoughts allows you to plan and create a wonderful future for yourself. That is until you are ready to go to the next level and surrender altogether to a power that can guide you on a journey far greater than you could have imagined ourselves. I call this the tipping point to Bliss.

We choose our joy and sorrows long before we experience them ~ Kahlil Gibran