Page 85 - Advance Copy: Todd Kaufman, Author

Chapter Six MEDITATION:
AN ART AND LEARNED SKILL
Wait – don’t roll your eyes just yet! You might think medi- tation is bogus, or you may have tried it, not gotten re- sults, felt like you failed and just dropped it. Bear with me and read through this section – and give it another try.
I want to start by mentioning that there are lots of types of meditation and they all have different goals. In ARP we need you to learn one key component (well, two, but let’s start here!).
You want to be able to become the Master of Choosing Your Thoughts. That is to say, you want to get really darn good at not letting those thought loops, ruminations or worries even get started, because once they do, they can be very difficult to let go of and can quickly lead to panic attacks and high-level anxiety. But what if you saw a thought loop coming – like a train miles down the track? Would that not be a lot easier to avoid than a train already barreling full speed into the station? What if the very first flash of that very first thought could be discarded, changed, or it could just float right on by you? If you could do this, you could avoid those anxiety-triggering thought loops.
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