Don't Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is The Beginning & End Of Suffering (Beyond Suffering Book 1)

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The irony of this situation is that everyone talks to themselves all day long. You just don’t verbalize this dialogue, so it isn’t heard by others. I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always.” What do I mean by that? I mean developing a better relationship with your thoughts. I mean recognizing and altering your habitual patterns of thought. I mean developing better habits of thought. The gist of The Work is simple: Believing your thoughts often leads to suffering. This means suffering is optional, because your thoughts are not always true. You can choose not to get swept away by your thoughts. Most of the time, your thoughts are just a story you tell yourself to make sense of the world. It’s all based on your interpretation of the world around you. Not some universal truth about reality.

Oftentimes, these are “should” thoughts. (e.g. “The world should be different,” or “My significant other should act in a different way.”) If all of these thoughts were empowering, non-stop thinking wouldn’t be an issue! But far too often, thoughts lead you astray, bring you down, or obstruct your ability to do things that you care about. When examining one of your thoughts, the first consideration is whether or not the thought is valid. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help with this:Start by noting thoughts and feelings with gentle curiosity as they arise. And when you find yourself face-to-face with a more intense thought or interpersonal conflict, use The Work to see more clearly.

Now, if you find that your thoughts aren’t valid or aren’t helpful, you’ll want to replace them with better thoughts. Here are some questions you can use to help with that: This principle gives you the power to take control of how you respond to your thoughts as you go through life. It helps you let go of thoughts that bring you down, so you can cultivate greater peace and joy. Consider what it would be like if you let go of this thought that brings you down. How would you feel? Noting what arises in your mind has a host of benefits. It helps you stay present and see the contents of your consciousness more clearly. This creates space between you and the thoughts you experience, which gives you more power to act with intention. Given the differing nature of thoughts, it’s helpful to equip yourself with multiple strategies to process them.Seeing that the thoughts which cause you suffering are not the truth helps you let go of them, so you can focus instead on loving what is. See Your Thoughts for What They Are That’s it. Don’t believe everything you think. Our default setting is to simultaneously believe and embody the thoughts that we have. But the thoughts that we have are sometimes wrong, unwise, or unhelpful. So we should not automatically buy into them, and we should not automatically use them to guide our behavior. Is it Valid? But thoughts are also important, and we do have some control over them. So it’s time to start exploring the topic of developing better thoughts. But entertaining this thought doesn’t do me any good. Since I can’t do anything to make Comcast better, it just makes me feel like a passive victim. So this thought, although valid, serves only to make me less happy. I would be better off thinking about something else. Replacement Thoughts

For example, a Democrat might have the thought, Republicans don’t care about poor people. Now, there is evidence to support this viewpoint: the gutting of social programs that benefit lower-income individuals, the sabotaging of the Affordable Care Act, big tax breaks for the rich, and so on. But there is counter-evidence as well. Many Republicans genuinely believe that free-market capitalism and private enterprise will improve the economic prospects of poor people more than government support will. Plus, a lot of poor people vote Republican, and it’s probably safe to assume they care about themselves.

Challenging Thinking Errors

When you’ve identified a thought that creates suffering for you, proceed with the following four questions: Now, turning that statement around in three ways, consider how the following are as true, or truer.