Decades ago, when I was first exposed to the inside out understanding of how we create our experiences, my very first ‘different’ way of thinking about things was to see my thinking as ticker tape crossing my mind. I was doing the dishes at my kitchen sink and could see my thinking moving across my mind as ticket tape. It was the first time I could see my thinking  separated from ‘me’.

Last week I came across a tweet from a person feeling bored with the ongoing recording in their head about themselves as ‘marmite’ and how it had become a habit that was now labelled a mental health issue. The use of the word ‘bored’ reminded me of times when I have felt exhausted and down and retreated to my bedroom to hide, only to have something later shift in my mind, a realization that I was bored with feeling down and to leap out of bed with a fresh, vital energy with which I moved into something different. This has happened several times and I am always left with the question, “How can this be? I was physically exhausted and yet here I am with boundless energy!” The experience points to a deeper truth about the nature of our feelings – they are created from the state of our minds, i.e. the quality of thought moving through them. I love the waking up to being ‘bored’, sooner or later our thinking always, always changes.

As I reflected on that tweet, the ticker tape image came to mind again, only this time it was paper tape that changed colour according to the thoughts we entertain. Imagine the flow of thought through you mind as a pale pink tape. When your mind is in that state, you too, flow lovingly in peace. But when our thinking changes, we experience the result. Start to think angry thoughts (see the red on the tape?), we feel that. Start to think self defeating thoughts (see the dark blue on the tape?), we feel that. The driver of our feelings and moods is the ticker tape of our minds, not our external events. This is where we need to turn our attention when we are not feeling so good.

We think that our changes in mood are created by the events around us. But this is simply the illusion we live in. Two people can view exactly the same circumstance in physical reality and have different experiences. What accounts for the difference? Our differences in perception and changes in mood are created by the quality of thought flowing through our minds. In any moment, we are either thinking from the ‘flow’ or thinking from how we have learned to think – our conditioning. Fresh thoughts and bespoke solutions never surface when the ticker tape of our minds is contaminated with the old habitual thinking we have imposed on it. Fresh thoughts and bespoke solutions can only surface when that ticker tape is at rest and uncontaminated by our personality or conditioning.

When you are feeling discombobulated, instead of focusing on the external events, look to the ticker tape first. See what you are creating with your thoughts, thoughts that like the Tweeter with the ‘marmite’ problem, you too have learned to think. We are all conditioned to think in certain ways, but when we repeatedly live life from our conditioned ways of thinking, they have the potential to become personality traits, habits, addictions, diagnoses and disorders.  Try and see your ticker tape of thinking. See the relationship between your ticker tape of thought and your experience and everything changes. And even when life gets messy, your best chance of elegant navigation is through the use of uncontaminated ticker tape, the only state of mind capable of tapping into limitless possibility. So rest, don’t act, and wait.