Welcome to the Buddhist boot camp podcast.

Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.

Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

Right now, in this very moment sitting here, I feel pretty good. But without moving a muscle,

I can significantly worsen how I feel just by thinking about something sad, terrible,

tragic, or painful. Or I can choose to improve my mood by imagining puppies, baked goods,

or a big bowl of fresh fruit. We are always standing at a fork in the road and through

nothing more than the power of our thoughts, we can navigate which way we want to go.

What's more fascinating is that even though I love puppies, baked goods, and fresh fruit,

instead of smiling when I think of them, I could actually choose to feel sad simply because I'm not currently holding any of them.

Whether I feel happy or crappy is totally up to me.

And to be clear, I'm not suggesting that the aim is for us to be constantly happy,

nor to imply there's anything wrong with us if we don't. Suppressing how we feel doesn't

actually solve any problems, it creates new ones. But because we are more deeply affected by our thoughts

than our experiences, it's important that we learn how our incredible minds work. Imagine if

your television was always on and you didn't know how to turn it off or turn down the volume.

Worse yet, it's not just playing shows and commercials. The voice in your head

is loud and judges everything you do. That would be enough to overwhelm anyone, so most

people resort to yelling at the TV instead of looking for the remote. But in this episode,

we're talking about doing things differently from now on. And to my fellow overthinkers out

there, this is good news.

I've been taught that even when we can't control our thoughts, we can still control the quality of our thoughts.

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