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

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When examining one of your thoughts, the first consideration is whether or not the thought is valid. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help with this: The irony of this situation is that everyone talks to themselves all day long. You just don’t verbalize this dialogue, so it isn’t heard by others. But when you hold on to your thoughts as if they are the utmost truth, unpleasant feelings are sure to follow.

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. 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. Regular doses of wisdom can help! Every other week, I publish an article with actionable tips and strategies that you can use immediately to make your life better.When you stop believing everything you think, you give yourself the opportunity to be more proactive, and live the life you want to live. One is that we like being right. It’s uncomfortable to discover that one of your thoughts is, in fact, wrong. So rather than open-mindedly examining the validity of our thoughts, we usually prefer to just assume we’re right and move on. But if our habitual thoughts routinely lead to unhappy outcomes, then we need to do the uncomfortable work of examining those thoughts.

Some thoughts appear in an instant. Others are reoccurring, and represent a longer-standing narrative in your mind. 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. For the sake of example, let’s say you were feeling upset with your friend Jane, and had the thought “Jane should be nicer to me.” Joseph Nguyen is the author of the #1 international bestselling book, Don't Believe Everything You Think, which has been translated into 31+ languages. 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 ThoughtsNow, 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: I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always.” 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?

Now, there are a great many ways to approach this challenge, and I don’t intend to cover them all today. Instead, I just want to introduce you to the most important principle of developing better thoughts, which is also the core tenet of cognitive therapy: If you can learn to get more control over your thoughts, then you’ll tend to have better emotions and better responses to your emotions. You’ll also have an easier time doing the things you need to do. After all, some of your thoughts are excuses. He is a writer who helps others realize who they truly are beyond their own thinking and conditioning to live an abundant life free from psychological and emotional suffering.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.) This principle gives you the power to take control of how you respond to your thoughts as you go through life. It helps you let go of thoughts that bring you down, so you can cultivate greater peace and joy. The human mind is constantly processing the world around it. Each day is a non-stop barrage of thoughts, questions, and observations.