Connie M Williams

Writing Thinking Consciously Rocks! has been a wonderful adventure. So much thanks goes to people like Og Mandino, who said, “I welcome obstacles for they are my challenge.” That one quotation challenged me to think differently. To James Allen for saying, “You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” I had to ask myself, “Where do my thoughts take me?”

Thanks to Oprah Winfrey for sharing her journey of enlightenment and for introducing the world to so many BIG MINDS. Oprah quotes Maya Angelou when she shares, “when you know better, you do better.” I now know better and I am doing better.
Many people have been mentors to me. One person I learned a lot from and he continues to teach me, is my brother Carl. Today, April 20, 2012, is the 18th anniversary of Carl’s murder. BUT instead of looking at today as a death day – I choose to celebrate today. A life celebration, not just for him, but for me too.

For a long time I didn’t think much about the way I think. I never realized I had the power to change things in my life just by the way I think.
I heard a podcast the other day with Tara Brach and she told this story:
What keeps us stressed or what keeps us locked in stress is we have an ongoing inner dialog that keeps us or keeps telling us what’s going to go wrong, or what already went wrong. It keeps telling us what’s missing.
We’re addicted to our thoughts, and while the natural life of emotions might be 90 seconds like Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor says, it takes the thinking to have us completely get caught and stuck in a certain emotional state.
We are addicted to our thoughts and one kind of thought keeps us in worry, blame, resentment, judgment or what’s going wrong.

Tara read this story…. I am walking down a street in Manhattan one woman writes. 5th Ave and the lower 60s, there are women with shopping bags in all sizes, and I realize with some horror that for the last fifteen blocks that I have been counting how many women have better and how many women have worse figures than I do. Did I say fifteen blocks? I meant fifteen years.
The woman’s story resonated with me because for 15 years I was stuck in an emotional place that caused me pain and sorrow. Most times when I thought of my brother Carl, the thoughts were not happy; they were not overflowing with the emotion of gratitude. They cut deeply, the wounds had never healed and it was as if sometimes the grief sucked the oxygen out of the room leaving me unable to breath.
Peace never came to me until I began asking God, “How may I be of service?” That is when the idea of this book came to me. I thought I had healed after my brother’s murder and I thought I could tell people how to overcome the loss of a loved one. What I learned while writing this book was, I had not healed from Carl’s murder.

We all grieve and we all grieve differently and it is no ones place to tell you or me how to do anything. So as I wrote and processed through the pain, the grief and a host of other emotions, I began to see a new person emerging. This new person is more forgiving, understanding and open-minded. This new person sees the murderer as someone not much different than myself. God loves us both equally. Like I say in the book…we are the same but different.

I learned how we go through life SHOULDING all over ourselves. We SHOULD do this, or we SHOULDN’T do that. When we do that our minds are comparing WHAT IS to what we think it SHOULD be and when we do that we will always cause ourselves suffering and more stress.

We cannot compare ourselves to anyone else. When we think we SHOULD…. SHOULD cause more stress because we believe our thoughts and we are comparing our life to something else - as if it SHOULD BE different than it is at that very moment.
What I learned while writing this book is I am a very special person, and I learned that you are too. I learned I am no better or worse than anyone else. If we are to love unconditionally, that includes murderers too.

One of my favorite quotations and we’ve been using it on the marketing material for this book is by James Allen. He said, “ You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” As I began to shift my thinking, my world shifted. I began to live out the quotation by Gandhi that says..”be the change you want to see in the world.”

For the world to have peace, I first had to have peace. As I strengthened my peace muscles, I began to see the world as a much more peaceful and loving place. I learned peace is not the absence of conflict and life absent of challenges, but the ability to cope with whatever comes our way, in a way that we don’t let it steal our happiness, nor our inner peace.

My wish for all of us is a life filled with peace, love, and joy!
Just think if…….. Well the next time something happens that steals your joy, or your peace….instead of thinking what if they? or if that…? Insert the word I, and ask, “What if I” or “Why did I,” “How come I”—go inside and you’ll find the answers to all your problems.
JUST THINK IF……… That’s it; I’ll stop there. JUST THINK IF………… (más)