Don't believe everything you think
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You can choose what to believe
Just because you thought of something doesn’t mean its true.
Thoughts are incredibly powerful and can take control of our lives, for good, bad, or somewhere in between. Sometimes thoughts are meaningful and are worth paying attention to, and other times thoughts are noise that are renting too much space in our brains.
Answer these questions:
Is this thought useful to me? Is it improving the quality of my life or causing me distress? Has it made me feel better to think about it, process it, and get to the root of it? Do I keep going down the same road and get the same result, namely, no improvement?
Yes, there are painful things in life that we need to think about and process which will help us move on, but how much should we think about it? There is a conventional belief that talking about what’s painful, in itself, is a good idea. The history of psychotherapy is built on this. I’m all for it when it works. But when it doesn’t work, time to do something else. Common sense asks: if you’re going nowhere why do you keep going there?
Change thoughts to change feelings and behaviors
One essential principle of cognitive behavior therapy—CBT is changing thoughts can have a huge positive impact on your life. It is nicely illustrated through the concept of the triangle * CBT Triangle – How it works
The path seems clear, but it isn’t easy. We have habitual thoughts that are automatic and ingrained in our brains. There we are, minding our own business and here’s that thought again, and the awful feeling that goes with it. For example, the thought: “I don’t know if this will work out…it probably won’t, then feeling anxious and sad, then saying ‘here I go again, I guess I can’t do anything about it, I’m really unhappy.”
Intention to change, or accept, with practice
Changing thoughts, or accepting them, are skills that takes practice. It entails a number of things, including dealing with some frustration along the way.
Some key principles: The thoughts that bother us tend to be automatic; we don’t try to think of them, they seem to appear. The challenge is to start noticing what the thoughts are, when they show up, and what might trigger them. Once you’ve got a handle on identifying the thoughts in real time, then you are on the path to gain more control and change the thoughts.
Acceptance is another way to change your thoughts. Maybe it’s best to accept a thought for what it is, a thought, and move on. What? This is how acceptance can translate into not believing everything I think. I can accept it as “a thought” that is there but doesn’t have to affect my core being. Of course, this takes manual labor of many repetitions to catch the thoughts and accept them. It may work the first time you do it, or not, but ultimately it requires a real focus over and over again. The payoff: RELIEF.