I bet you think that email is telling you something about who you are as a person?

Those words rang clear in my mind and completely derailed my thinking and instantly changed my mood.

I had been in the habit of checking emails first thing in the morning to get ahead of anything that might arise overnight and dealing with anything that might catch me unawares. For as long as I could remember, my unconscious strategy, at the time, had been to ensure I had considered every contingency.

As a work strategy it was great for the people I reported to because I had most things covered and was able to respond quickly if things didn’t go as planned. As a life strategy it was terrible. I was defensive, always on the lookout for things to go wrong and if it did, I was always worried how it would reflect on my competence. I hardly ever felt relaxed, which is not a good way to do productive work let alone a recipe for a healthy life.

Back to the email, I had followed my normal routine of waking up, grabbing a coffee, starting my laptop, and checking emails first thing in the morning to see if there was anything I needed to deal with before I made my way into the office.

And there it was, a single email asking me for an update on some aspect of the project I was delivering. I remember it clearly. My immediate reaction was defensive. For some reason I had decided this request was questioning my ability to manage the project, my thinking spiralled, my mood dropped and my internal voice got angry.

I stewed on it for the next couple of hours, thinking of all the things I could have done wrong, or of all the things I may not have anticipated that I should have. It wasn’t a fun time inside my head and the world looked bleak.

I jumped in the car to head to the office, still angry and frustrated, with the recurring thought that I was ready to quit if challenged. Not a productive mindset.

I can remember exactly where I was on my drive to work when the insight hit. The voice of my coach sounding in my head was the trigger, “I bet you think that email is telling you something about who you are as a person?”.

The recognition and change were instant. My mood softened and the colours of the surrounding scenery changed immediately, going from dull to vibrant the moment my thinking changed. I’d gone from believing someone was out to get me, to knowing my reaction was all made up — it existed in my own thinking, but that thinking had seemed so real it painted my whole world dark. I could see I was the cause of that creation, and with that, I could choose to let it go and return to a more natural state.

This is when I really started to understand what mystic Sydney Banks was talking about when he talked about Thought as a creative power. Most of the time I am unaware of how I’m using that gift, and it’s only when it occurs to me to stop and notice how I’m feeling that I see whether I’m the source of my own joy or misery.

As an experiment, you might want to take some time during the course of your day to notice how you’re using thought, not to become mindful of your thinking, but to start to notice how certain thought patterns make you feel as a simple guide to how you’re using Thought.