Taken from the InnerSelf.com - Daily Inspiration:

You can change your habits and learn to manage your time, but without learning to manage your mind, inner peace is impossible. Even when you're sitting in a comfortable living room, surrounded by loved ones and trying to relax, your mind is capable of producing outrageously stressful mental movies.
You probably create them several times a day, perhaps without even noticing what you're doing. The key to making your mind your ally, rather than your enemy, is to become aware of how you produce and direct your very own cinema of the absurd. Then you can choose to run a different feature. Awareness and choice are the keys to mental peace.This week, notice your thinking and develop the habit of awareness. Witness your thoughts with the recognition that you are not your thoughts. They are just a mental movie, and you can make the choice to
run another film. Try saying an emphatic mental "Stop it" when you feel tense and constricted by unproductive obsessing. Then substitute a train of thought that can be your ally in experiencing inner peace. Namaste

In order for spirits to reach us...

....our minds must be open to what could be. Negative thinking, skepticism, and control create restriction, and spirits cannot harness the energy from us necessary to communicate. 

~ James Van Praagh