|
|
Many people live most of their lives coping with long periods of anxiety, stress, sadness, spiralling downward into unexplained unhappiness. Mental and physical exhaustion even approaches the level of clinical depression. Whether the reasons are a fast paced life or intense work responsibilites, financial strain, relationship problems or disillusionment with the future, their feelings never really improve.
Prolonged Bad Moods
Our moods constantly change throughout the day. Some people can turn a short dip in a good mood into a long bad mood that lasts an entire day, even stretching into days or weeks of unhappiness and irritability. When some event causes the mood to change from good to sadness or disappointment, it is natural to try to think our way out of whatever the cause was so as to find a solution. It is during this process that people sift through past regrets and resentments, recognizing wrong turns they’ve taken. Before long they’re stuck in the mud of the past. Sad now because they can’t cheer themselves up. Negative self-talk tells you that it’s all your fault and convinces you that you’re a loser. That you cannot possibly accomplish those lofty goals you have, no matter how much student debt you’ve piled up on yourself.
When “They” Find Out
It then becomes easy to lose track of who you are. You become trapped in a cycle of self-judging, finding fault with yourself for not being your ideal-self. Your negative self-talk reminds you of what’s wrong with you, why your life is a mess, and what will happen when “they” find out how inferior you really are – even though you aren’t.
Red Alert
Our brain is an incredible organ. It gives us the ability to remember past events. We look inward to find solutions to warn us of pending or future difficulties. By digging up past memories to guide us, we find it difficult to stay focused. Our fight or flight response is automatically triggered and we are put on red-alert. The way we react to this is what keeps us in a state of anxiety mixed with sadness and unhappiness.
Life doesn’t have to be like this. Just as we left our good mood in favor of unhappiness, we can think ourselves back to happy. Although we might not be equipped to stop the flow of unhappy memories, we can stop how they affect our life. When we realize our bad mood is the result of thoughts, we are well on our way to correcting the situation.
Extreme Conclusions
When something negative happens, the natural approach is to latch onto irrational negative thinking. To draw extreme conclusions and explanations which feed on themselves with a continual stream of negative self-talk. It holds true then that the opposite effect would result if positive rational thinking was applied. When we understand that our negative thoughts and opinions are unjustified, we can know that unlimited possibilities exist.
End Suffering
Over twenty-five hundred years ago, long before Socrates said “the key to happiness is discovering the true self,” Siddhartha Guatama, the Buddha, taught his students that “suffering is caused by desire, and can be alleviated by releasing desire, and that mindfulness is a necessary step to end suffering.”
Neither Reject Nor Pursue
It took over two thousand years for mindfulness to seep into western psychology. Key to mindfulness is a form of meditation whereby we watch what is going on in a detached, decentered, non-judgemental way, “learning neither to reject things nor to pursue them, but to just let them be and let them go.”
In mindfulness meditation, we learn to observe thought processes calmly, without identifying with them, and realize that our minds have a life of their own. A thought of failure, for instance, is simply an event in the mind, not a launching pad to the conclusion of “I am a failure.” With practice we can learn that our thoughts are just thoughts. Nothing More.
Brood Some More
When we apply this philosophy to our state of unhappiness we see people believing if they worry enough about their unhappiness they will eventually stumble upon a solution. They just need to brood one last time, think a little deeper, sift through a few more bad memories so they can dig out the correct answers.
Brooding Is the Problem
But both research as well as mindfulness show the opposite is true. Brooding over problems reduces our ability to solve them, and is hopeless at dealing with emotional difficulties such as sadness, anxiety, unhappiness or mild depression. To put it simply, thoughts are just thoughts. “Brooding is the problem, not the solution.”
A Higher Plain
Sit back and reflect for a moment. The brain doesn’t just think, it can be aware that it is thinking. Understanding this puts you on a higher plain. You can view life and yourself with unclouded vision. Being aware allows you to side-step negative thoughts, seeing them for exactly what they are. Just thoughts. Seeing the world and yourself with this new set of eyes will give you a feeling of not just happiness but true contentment that comes from knowing anything is possible.
This report is not a diagnosis. We hope this information can guide you toward improving your life.
Review our Knowledge Base or the links displayed on this page for similar and related topics.