Why control your thoughts?
The ability to control your thoughts is an important skill for controlling many conditions, ranging from panic and depression to anger and attacks of self-denial.
“He who controls his thoughts controls his life.” Psychologist of Happiness.
Control and management of your thoughts, as you will understand later, is not at all blocking and denying your mental judgments. The practice of thought management is the practice of mindfulness.
Mindfulness is the key to controlling thoughts and managing emotions.
Evaluative thoughts often serve as a trigger for many emotional states:
“I’m fat and no one needs me!” and now depression is knocking on your door.
“I probably have an incurable disease and will die soon?” - welcome, panic attack!
“He shouldn't do this to me! Never!" - a broken cup on the floor and hands shaking with anger.
Do you want to learn how to manage your thoughts? Yes? Exactly? What for?
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Our brain is like a computer. The only difference between it and a real electronic machine is its intelligence. Our brains can control themselves, but it takes time to master this skill.
Managing Emotions
In the beginning, you need to learn to examine your mind and thoughts. The fact is that thoughts and emotions are driven by knowledge and faith. If you stop believing in something, then that thought is destroyed, and something else is accepted as the truth.
Learn to think logically, be calm and balanced, avoiding unnecessary emotions. Emotions are the main enemy of logic. In difficult and stressful situations, never turn off your head and don’t let your emotions blind you. Of course, there is no need to turn into a soulless robot: we are talking about those circumstances in which it is simply necessary to manage what is happening, and not go with the flow.
We inherited the emotional perception of the world from our ancestors, so depriving ourselves of this or taming our feelings does not always work quickly and effectively. And you don’t have to do it 100 percent. To be the master of your emotions, you need to learn to do three things: distribute, focus and switch emotions.
Distribution means a person’s need to understand the world. The more information we have, the more rationally we can distribute our emotions.
Concentration is concentration. In order to concentrate on something, avoiding emotional outbursts that interfere with work or some process, you need to learn to put yourself in some new conditions that do not allow you to succumb to feelings.
Switching is the replacement of real-life emotions with other, less dangerous ones. This method is good if you need to get rid of fear, anger or rage. You are simply switching thoughts.
Thought management
As experts say, if you learn to manage your thoughts, you will learn to manage your emotions, and you will be able to control what is happening in your head. Scientists and psychologists advise learning to cope with negative emotions in order to bring your inner world to complete harmony. Thoughts about other people's successes, envy of those who were luckier - without all this you will cope just fine. And what’s more, you will achieve success yourself.
It's simple - calmness brings thoughts into complete order. In turn, right thoughts will never lead you into a state of anger, rage or fear. This is a fine line that you need to learn to feel so as not to burn out emotionally, but also not to become insensitive in the eyes of others.
Remember that nature loves balance. There are those emotions that make us stronger, and those thoughts that make us move forward. But if you yourself feel like some obsession is eating away at you from the inside, it’s time to get rid of it. Isolate from what emotions it stems, forbid yourself to think about it, because you already have a lot to do on the way to achievements.
We wish you success and control over your consciousness. The psychology of relationships with oneself is learned through trial and error, so failures should not be regarded as a purely negative fact, because they teach us something new. Stop worrying about everything, because everything that happens to us is a wonderful experience called life. Life is a series of right and wrong actions, controlled by emotions and thoughts.
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28.02.2016 00:10
The practice of observing thoughts “White Room”
In this helpful mindfulness exercise, you will observe your mind at work, imagining that it is a white room through which thoughts pass.
You can perform it in any quiet place, sitting or lying down.
Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Relax your body using one of the relaxation methods convenient for you.
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Breathe slowly and evenly throughout this exercise.
Imagine that you are in a medium-sized white room with two doors.
Imagine that your thoughts are floating through a white room and leaving it forever.
Thoughts enter through one door and leave through another.
As soon as a thought appears, concentrate on it and try to classify it as evaluative thoughts or non-evaluative ones.
Examine each thought carefully, with curiosity and compassion until it goes away.
Don't try to analyze it, just note whether it's evaluative or not.
Don't challenge it, don't try to believe or disbelieve it.
Just realize that this is a thought, a brief moment of your brain activity, a random guest in your white room.
Beware of thoughts that you have categorized as judgmental. They will try to take control of you, to force you to accept the assessment.
What is the point of this thought control exercise?
The point of this exercise is to notice how “sticky” evaluative thoughts are - how they get stuck in your mind and how difficult it is to get rid of them.
You will determine that a thought is painful and judgmental by how long it stays in the white room, or by whether you begin to feel any emotion about it.
Try to constantly maintain even breathing, maintain a clear image of a white room and doors, monitor your thoughts and classify them.
Remember! Thought is not you! A thought is just a thought!
You are so much more than your thoughts. You are the person who creates the white room through which thoughts are allowed to pass. You have a million of them, they leave, but you still remain.
A thought does not require any action from you. A thought does not oblige you to believe in it. Thought is not you!
Just watch the thoughts pass through the white room. Let them live out their short lives and tell yourself that they have a right to exist, even judgmental ones.
Just acknowledge your thoughts, let them go when the time comes, and prepare to meet new ones - one by one.
Continue this practice until you feel that you have truly distanced yourself from your thoughts. Do it until even evaluative thoughts begin to pass through the white room without stopping.
Share in the comments what you realized during this exercise and what thoughts lasted the longest in the white room.
What is the nature of your thoughts and what were your evaluative thoughts about? Share!
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We get rid of worries that prevent us from building our lives productively
It is very important to understand that what we think about controls our life.
Thoughts can give us the right direction for further development or, on the contrary, act as a kind of inhibitory element.
Think and remember - how often have you put off important and primary tasks because some thought or unpleasant experience was constantly spinning in your head?
For example, you simply thought about the fact that the upcoming cleaning is tedious, the repairs will never be completed, a trip to the store is associated with unpleasant crowding and expenses, and as a result, you postponed the planned event indefinitely. Such emotions are a brake that prevents us from properly managing our personal time, and therefore psychologists have developed special exercises to control relaxing and distracting thoughts.
Let's share some exercises:
- Never dramatize an upcoming event or matter. Remember the saying about “the eyes are afraid, but the hands do.” No work is actually as routine and boring as our imagination makes it out to be;
- Don't start thinking about the cleaning you planned for Sunday - Friday. In general, try to forget about the matter until the immediate moment of its implementation;
- Come up with an incentive or reward that you will please yourself with at the end of the task and think about it, and not about what exactly you have to do;
- Convince yourself that your activity is an important life experience, of great benefit both for you personally and for your environment;
- When doing work, do it without thinking - as if everything you do is strictly according to the regulations.
As soon as you learn to control relaxing thoughts in your head, you will notice that your life will change radically - you will accomplish more and easily learn new knowledge, and use the experience gained to your advantage in all areas of life.
But negative thoughts are not only of a relaxing nature - some thoughts can ruin a person’s mood for the whole day and cause severe stress. How to monitor and eliminate such thoughts, control your thoughts and emotions - read in the next section of the article.
