Do you struggle with negative thinking
and feel that you need to control your
thoughts? Well, stay with me because I'm
going to share something that will help
you, but I also want to share a different
perspective on this, because trying to
'control' your thoughts probably isn't
actually the best approach, and I want to
explore what is! So let's get right down
to it! Now the first thing to understand
is that feeling follows thought. In order
for us to have any kind of internal
emotional feeling, there must have been
some thought that that feeling is
created by. To have any feeling like
stress or anxiety, there must have been
some thought that that's a response to.
If I'm feeling anxious about work for
example, I must be in my mental simulator
simulating something about work for that
feeling to come up, but it's not
necessarily conscious thought and in
fact it probably isn't, because if it was
conscious thinking that was leading to
these feelings, you'd simply choose to
not do that thinking. Now since feeling
follows thought it seems like the
obvious conclusion that the remedy to
negative internal feelings is to 'control'
our thinking, but there are three
problems with that. Problem number one is
that you can't control it, or at least
not for any length of time, not
permanently that's for sure! I mean you
can control your thoughts for a short
amount of time but there comes a point
that where that gets too tiring to keep
up. There comes a point where you do have
to let your guard down. The bottom line
is it's simply not up to us what shows
up in the stream of thought, and even if
you try to resist your thoughts I can
guarantee one thing: thoughts
resist arrest! Now problem number two is
that that thinking might have an
important message for you. It might be
reminding you that you have to do
something that you could have easily
forgotten. You might be walking into a
problem and that thinking might be your
intuition warning you about that. Now the
caveat to all that of course is it might
be none of those things! It might simply
be negative bias thinking, but sometimes
to be sure about that, it's useful to
tune in to the uncomfortable feeling and
actually ask: Do you have an important
message for me?
By the way what books have you already
read about managing negative thinking?
Please leave a comment down there and
tell me what books you've read.
I'll read every comment you leave and
I'll reply to as many as I can.
Problem number three is that we only
need to control what we fear, so if we
need to control our thinking that means
we fear our thinking, and that means
we're not free! Now probably the best way
for me to make this point is to use a
metaphor and in actual fact I'm going to
refer to a movie. I don't know if you like
superhero movies or whether you would
have seen Doctor Strange, but that's the
movie I'm gonna refer to. If you
haven't seen that movie and you don't
want the ending to get spoiled, you might
want to skip forward a minute or so to
not hear this, but if you have seen the
movie or you're willing to hear what
I've got to say anyway, it's this:
That movie is about a super character
called Dormammu who is coming to destroy
the Earth.
Now Doctor Strange isn't actually
powerful enough to stop him but what he
can do is he traps him in a time loop
so that he can't do the destruction of
the Earth, but the thing is Doctor
Strange is trapped in that time loop
with him! They're both trapped! Of
course in the end, in the movie, they make
an agreement which is that Dormammu
isn't going to destroy the earth so that
Doctor Strange will release the time loop,
but the thing is in order to trap
Dormammu, Doctor Strange has to trap himself.
And it's a little bit like that when we
try to control our thinking. If we have
to be on guard, monitoring our thinking
for things that we have to control, and
then control them, then we're just as
much a prisoner of our thinking as our
thinking becomes a prisoner of us. So
what is better than trying to control
our thinking? It's to change our
relationship with Thought. To no longer
be afraid of our thinking, that's where
real emotional freedom is. Syd Banks,
whose spiritual teachings are now known
as The Three Principles of Mind,
Consciousness and Thought, always said
that if the only thing people learned
was not to be afraid of their experience,
and for that you might say to not be
afraid of their thinking, that alone
would change the world.
And the interesting thing is is that
when you stop trying to control your
thoughts, and stop resisting thoughts, and
stop fighting and wrestling with your
thoughts, then it actually seems like
less of the negative thinking comes up
anyway! By the way if you're enjoying
this video do give it a thumbs up and
don't forget to subscribe to the channel
and click the notifications bell so
that you'll know when more content like
this arrives. So if changing our
relationship with thought is the better
way forward then of course the big
question becomes HOW? The thing is though,
this is not a quick pill! This is not 1 2
3 4 5 steps and you're done. This is a
deeper, more long-term investment. This is
a deeper and more soulful conversation
that takes time to unfold. This falls
into the category of 'practices' rather
than 'interventions'. Even so I'd like to
give you a place to start,
and I think a good place to start is to
practice being a neutral observer of
your own thinking: to see the stream of
thought like a conveyor belt that's
moving across and the thoughts are boxes on
the conveyor belt. Now this might seem a
bit 'Generation Game' to you! And the idea
is to be able to see the boxes going
across on the conveyor belt without
actually having to get involved with any
of them; without having to wrestle with
any of them. I think a second good place
to start is to start doing some self-care
practices like the one that I'm gonna
point to in this video up here. I think a
third good place to start is to practice
a ritual that you can use when you feel
stress rising in the moment. Now for that
I do have a simple five-step practice
which you can download by going to the
pinned comment below this video, and
clicking on the download link. It's
really simple, it's really effective and
it's absolutely free, so please help
yourself. Now a great follow-on video to
continue this conversation is this one
here. It's all about when you can't stop
thinking about work outside of work. Or
if you've already washed that one, then
watch this one here. And don't forget to
give this video a thumbs up if you liked
it and don't forget to subscribe to the
channel and hit the notifications bell
so that you'll
know when more content like this arrives.
I wish health and happiness to you and
I'll see you again next week.