How to Use Your Imagination

Clear Out the “Weeds” of Negative Thoughts

Using a Farming Metaphor

I’ve found it’s easier to work with my imagination if I use a metaphor to help build a repeatable process for using my imagination. Coming from generations of farming folk, a metaphor the speaks to me is planting and growing a field of crops.

Clearing the Weeds of Negative Thoughts Prepares a Fertile Field

Before sowing seeds, make the field fertile by clearing out the weeds. This translates to removing poisonous thoughts among them self-denigration, jealousy, envy, blame and dislike.  For most of us, nurturing the weeds of negative thoughts is habitual. It has become so much of a habit we don’t notice it. In fact, we accept it as natural.  It may be habitual. It may be familiar, but it is not natural.

Suggestions for Clearing Negative Thoughts

Paradoxically, it has never worked for me to fight with the weeds of my negative thoughts. It simply multiplies the amount of fruitless internal dialogue. Speaking for myself, the most effective way dump the dialogue is to spend fifteen to twenty minutes simply breathing and counting my breath. Some days, that process makes me crazy, so I pick up a felt tip pen and simply sketch. Putting on a pair of headphones and dancing to workout music also works to clear my mind, with the added benefit of a cardio workout.