How much of what you think is true? Have a think. How much of your thinking is bad thinking? Or has any basis in reality or fact?
It takes self-reflection and a certain distancing to really determine how much of our thinking is either true or useful. Because when you think about it (and I strongly advise you to here – regularly), our thoughts are a curious mix of hypotheses, musings and what ifs. Stories and narratives we make up on the fly. Yet we take them as real.
And this is highly dangerous.
Our thoughts play such a crucial role in our lives and our mental states; it’s like they are loaded weapons that can go off at any time and cause total devastation. And not just for ourselves.
This idea is another nugget of 50 from my book, ‘Unlocking My Greatest Self’ – a practical guide to surviving and thriving in a crazy 21st century world.
Beware Auto-Pilot!
We’re living an illusion. A dream. Something that forms the basis of many spiritual and philosophical doctrines.
You can understand this better if you consider that much of the time our hard-held, often ill-informed opinions, our individual imaginations, perspectives and ignorances that we react to and behave unto, actually shape our worlds in line with them.
Add to that the fact that mostly we’re half asleep and the notion of living a dream-like illusion becomes a little clearer.
When we’re living in a state of auto-pilot, we’re in a kind of self-hypnotic trance where we’re hardly aware of what’s happening around us; we find ourselves stuck in a semi-conscious habit. Or in a routine where we’re comfortably numb (nod to Pink Floyd).
Those are the typical moments when we’re caught off-guard and vulnerable to those infamous intrusive thoughts (read more in another blog) – crazy distorted cognitions that can have profound consequences.
So from a mental health perspective, for your mental well-being, it’s important to understand that thoughts are indeed like hand grenades – only the jury is out on exactly who’s throwing them!
To help tackle the ensuing anxiety, depression and stress from a practical perspective, let’s look at a process I use regularly.
How to Defuse Bad Thinking and Illusions
Leaves on a Stream
- Find a quiet comfortable place, close your eyes and take 10 mins out.
- Imagine you are walking in the countryside, alone. It’s a nice, warm, autumnal day and the sun’s out – and you walk along and you see ahead of you a river or stream.
- You stop and observe the glinting water … and as you do, you look up and over to the bank on the other side.
- Then, looking over, you look upwards at the trees opposite and the branches overhanging the water. As you look up you see a leaf fall from one of the branches and settle on the surface of the river. Watch the leaf pass downstream.
- Continue with this idea, with leaves falling, and sticking to the water and watching them float downstream
- When a random thought pops up (and it sure as hell will!)… put it on the leaf (imagine you’re standing by the river with a paper and pen and write the thought on the piece of paper) and LET IT GO. Repeat this pattern for 10 minutes with any thought that emerges. Whatever the thought.
- And keep observing the leaves falling down, sticking to the water and putting your thoughts or images on the leaves on the stream.
- Once you have practised this scenario as a meditation a few times, you can use this it with negative thoughts in the day in any situation you’re in.
This exercise is based around Cognitive Defusion. When we get attached to a particular thought, we form a story around it and the thoughts pile up one after the other until we find we’ve spiralled into negativity and have often catastrophised something that was just a minor setback, if that. The key is acceptance, not fighting the thoughts as they emerge but to LET GO.
How Bad Thinking can Impact the World too
We’ve long been taught that thoughts are harmless, but we’ve just learned what harm they can do from an individual mental health perspective if not handled carefully. What if we actually ACT on them?
Take some of the skewed thinking we read on social media. The flotsam and jetsam of shouty, inflexible opinion, counter-opinion and attention-needy posts can be distorted and hell rendering. In many senses, thinking is ego-based, futile, faulty and divisive.
Clearly we have to be very careful not to follow our thoughts too far.
Our imaginations are what make us a unique species. Creative, productive, innovative, it’s the imagination that helps us form and build decent co-operative societies, nation states and groups that are (with kindness and love) mutually beneficial – and a standard of living which allows us all to thrive in all the optimal ways possible.
But just as our thoughts and imaginations can be wonderfully creative and exhilarating, they cast an ominous shadow that stretches beyond the social media context above.
In the minds of an obstinate, ego-centric or damaged personality, they can be divisive, damaging and highly destructive in the world at large. And we see this play out in households and families and across lands and cultures every day.
This is where Consciousness and Awareness can be the most healing tool for us all as a human collective – on a precariously spinning planet of 8 billion souls in a mysteriously endless universe.
My book on Amazon
For more of these type of nuggets, seek out my book ‘Unlocking my Greatest Self’ – 50 secrets to becoming calm, confident and fulfilled. It’s available on Amazon.
Help from DOCwellness
And for one to one help on handling thoughts and using processes to overcome anxiety, phobias and bad habits, Contact us today or call 07778 613268 if you would like to discuss things more.