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

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You might feel insistent that this thought is true! If it really does feels true at first glance, inquire again. Can you really know that it’s true? Be honest with yourself. Start by locating a thought that is causing you suffering in some way. If you’re having troubles with another person in your life, Katie’s “Judge Your Neighbor” worksheet is a good way to locate these thoughts. Given the differing nature of thoughts, it’s helpful to equip yourself with multiple strategies to process them. 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? 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.

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 With Mental Noting, you gently “note” thoughts or sensations as they arise in your mind by giving them a simple 1-word descriptor. (e.g. warm, tense, anger, etc.) 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. 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.The Work” of Byron Katie is a process of inquiry that helps you identify and question the thoughts that cause you the most suffering.

When you’ve identified a thought that creates suffering for you, proceed with the following four questions: Even if our thoughts are valid, they still might not be helpful. Just because a thought is true and logical does not mean you want to act on it, embody it, or allow it to occupy your mind. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help determine whether or not a thought is helpful: The second reason why not believing everything you think is difficult is that we’re often unaware of our thoughts. Most of our thoughts arise automatically, and we instantly believe and embody them. We rarely recognize them as thoughts at all. Becoming more aware of your thoughts requires mindfulness, journaling, or the help of a cognitive therapist.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: When you stop believing everything you think, you give yourself the opportunity to be more proactive, and live the life you want to live.