Managing Thoughts
Emulate habits, not behaviours of successful people.
Negative thoughts compound. The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop.
Why do we expect so much from ourselves?
Often we feel that the most difficult part about improving is to figure out what to do. When we see someone successful we tell ourselves that we also want to be the same and then we try to copy the most superficial aspects of the person in order to attempt to replicate their success. This is why we set such unrealistic goals on ourselves. Also we fall into the trap of thinking that if we think it, it will be done.
Why do we then feel worthless when we fail to achieve these goals within a matter of few days?
Because it is easy find logic in our thoughts and ideas. As an example, it is easy to read an article that says that breathing slowly helps improve mindfulness and then we tell ourselves I am going to breathe slowly every day.
In that moment we feel we have made a sensible target and that now onwards we will change this aspect about ourselves. But actually we have defined nothing. Hence the next day it is easy to feel bad that we didn’t do anything about it. Actually we never defined what was to be done in the first place.
We only defined what we want, not how to get it.
Why do we then form a negative image of ourselves for not being able to accomplish things?
This I believe stems from an unreasonable expectation of plasticity from self. That is, that if I think I will do B instead of A every day then magically I will be able to stick to this thought process. But humans are creatures of habit and they will go back to doing A very quickly.
Hence once we do this deep thought exercise we realise that we should:
Read a lot
Not fall into the trap of setting arbitrary goals of “I’ll become this different persons from now”
Not self-disrespect self and speak of self in third person. Be kind to self.
Focus on moments rather than end-of-day retrospects. What should I do right now? If you don’t have answer then build a habit plan and refer it when in doubt.
With this foundational thought exercise, we should now read this again.
Negative thoughts compound. The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop.
On reading this the second time, we learn that we think of ourself as worthless, because we don’t see ourself as ourself. We see ourself as the person in front of us in that moment who we want to be like.
We feel stupid because we feel that converting a goal into actionable steps is trivial and anyone could do it.
We feel ugly because we are always looking at the best quality in the other person and grading ourself against that peak attribute of the other person.
You get trapped in a thought loop.
Now every time we look at someone, we are conditioned to think that there is a vast expanse between where I stand and where the other person stands and I will never be able to get there.
Why practice?
Painting is a link from mind to brush.
Writing is a link from mind to words.
Driving is a link from mind to wheel.
Cooking is link from mind to pan.
Thinking and doing becomes one.