Working With Troublesome Thoughts

If you stop and look it it, you might realise that many of our problems come not from events themselves, but our thoughts about those events. For example, if I apply for a job and don't get it, it's pretty crap in itself, but, my thoughts will then jump in and make it much worse. I might think: "I'm such a failure for not getting that job, nothing ever works out for me, life is shit!", instead of the more rational: "There were 200 people going for this job, so the chances weren't that good that I would get it, I know I don't have X skill that they were looking for." 
Inside our own heads we tend to give ourselves the worst deal, and no-one can hear us do it, so we get away with it all day long. If a friend was listening in on our internal conversation, they would intervene with a less negatively biased, and more rational, and kinder version of what we tell ourselves, and we'd probably feel a lot better as a result!

If we want a more peaceful and happy life, we need to get better at challenging our own thoughts, and choosing more wisely what to believe. Here are a couple of questions you can use to help you do that:

• Is this thought true? - If you're feeling down or upset, those feelings may influence you to answer a resounding YES to this, so then ask:
• Is this thought 100% true? Or is it true 100% of the time? - If you're honest, it's probably not always true, there are times when things are quite good, and times when I am successful at things.
• Is this thought an old habit, or do the facts support it? - Many of our thoughts are old habits, formed when we were little kids learning about the world. If I got an F in a test at school, and the teacher made an example of me, or told my parents and I got in trouble, that feeling of being a failure could have stuck with me, and coloured my view of myself since. 
• Is this thought mine? Or did someone pass it on to me? - Sometimes our thoughts are handed down, for example, if my family or society placed a lot of value on status being a sign of your worth as a person, then not getting a prestigious job could feel like failure, with the added fear of no longer being accepted. This is a big deal for us as in hunter-gatherer times we need to belong to a group in order to survive, there was safety in numbers. We don't live that way any more, but our brains haven't evolved as quickly as our way of life. Not fitting in is still scary to us, but too often the effort to fit in stops us from being who we really are. 
• How will my life be if I continue to believe this thought? - If I continue to believe the thought that "I'm a failure", I'm likely to feel low, and give up trying for things. Do I want that?
• How do I feel when I believe this thought? - You can do a bit of an experiment with this right now, however you're feeling. Say to yourself "I'm a failure" a couple of times, and notice how it feels in the body. I feel myself crumple a little when I do it. There's no way I want to go through life feeling like that! Why not make peace and happiness my only goal here, and choose thoughts that feel good. Life is short after all!

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"Thoughts simply aren’t facts, they are mental events that pop up in the mind and are dependent on our mood." - Elisha Goldstein

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