How to Stop Negative Thoughts in 180 Seconds Without Meditating
medium.com
medium.com
You can do the same."
The phrase "You can do the same" already shows that this person has never dealt with real psychological problems. I wish these self-help gurus would just say "Here is something that works for some people. Try it. Maybe it works and if it doesn't work it's not your fault". Instead you have to defend yourself if the well-meant advice from people doesn't work.
I mean, i'm not personally one of those people who likes 'inspirational' sales programs. Personally, when it comes time for me to do something really difficult, I find it works best if I acknowledge it as really difficult as I'm doing it. I mean, I'm trying to lose weight right now, and it is a very difficult thing - not just for people with serious psychological issues, but for almost everyone.[1] Yes, yes, just eat less and work out more. It is simple but just because something is simple does not make it easy, especially when you are trying to run counter to a drive as strong as the drive to eat more calories than you burn. Really, I think that studying people who competitively hold their breath is... relevant here. Most people simply can't make themselves hold their breath as long as their body could physiologically take it. Now, eating less is... less intense than depriving yourself of oxygen, but as evidenced by the failure rates, it's still going against a very basic drive.
And for me, knowing that I will almost certainly never get a "beach body" and that I'll have to count calories and struggle for the rest of my life just to not continue ballooning outward, I think, is a much better long term solution than thinking that I somehow have some secret knowledge that the 99% doesn't have, or that I'm otherwise sure to succeed. I mean, the biggest danger I see is giving up after having a short-term failure of willpower. Binging one day without tracking and then just throwing up my arms and giving up. If instead of shooting for the beach body, I am simply struggling to not be a blob, and every bit less blob-like I am is progress? That's a better, more realistic long-term goal for me.
But... I might be unusual in that regard. Most people seem to think that having some special knowledge, or believing that they have .01% levels of willpower helps them actually achieve more. "The power of positive thinking" and all that. And maybe it does, for them. And I guess I think that's okay, even though I personally find it super irritating and unhelpful.
[1]https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2015.3027...
Anyhow, I remember the first time I mentioned that it was a reasonably fast, light read to someone else, and they reacted like I had asked them to read "Atlas Shrugged" or something. Like, apparently, reading anything longer than a medium post is a whole lot of effort for most people, even if it's actually good.
I think about this every time a thin person tells me how easy it is to lose weight just by avoiding certain foods and, you know, eating a reasonable amount of said foods, or "just being more mindful." "It's easy" - I mean, I'm sure it is easy for you, and that's great! But some of us need to monitor our intake. I mean, I'll sit there and scarf a pound of pecans in a sitting, if I don't expend significant will to stop myself, and at what, 200 calories an ounce, I don't have to do that often to remain fat. And fruit juice? I think a significant portion of my gut is composed of that delicious fresh orange juice that the local taquaria will squeeze for you (and serve in those giant cups)
Of course, I don't yet know if monitoring my calories in and out will be enough to actually get myself to a reasonable size or not. I've only been doing it for two weeks or so. But I have been a vegitarian, and in and of itself, that doesn't solve the problem.
I hear what you're saying, but I didn't mention the word easy, just that everyone I know who has switched to a whole food plant based diet has lost weight, whether they intended to or not.
So eating a pound of pecans would be no problem. The orange juice on the other hand isn't WFPB
Caveat Emptor and all that, but if we assume the best intentions of the article's author: they're just giving people tools, and attempting to show that those tools can work. Convincing people that the tools work will require some marketing language and idioms.
Again, useful framework but main problem I have with it is for when the negative thoughts are very real and very deserved. From something small (like you left your dirty dishes in the sink for your partner to deal with) to something large (like you ran somebody and killed them while drunk driving), you screwed up and the thoughts of shame and embarrassment are appropriate. For things you can’t truly rectify (to make an extreme example, like bringing someone back to life that you killed), there is often no amount of positive countering that will overcome it. Similar for things like not liking something about your appearance that can’t be easily changed like your height. No amount of positive countering can undo the fact. It ends up looking a lot like denial, self deception, and minimization to use this framework in these cases.
Therefore, every experience of joy they have thereafter will be in contrast to this deep despair. As messed up as it sounds, many times extreme tragedy can lead to more joy and happiness than would be possible otherwise. Simply because they have more awareness and appreciation than they did in the past.
When something has gone wrong, one can still think positively about the situation, but the framework to use in that case is to simply ask 'why' over and over again until you've found the true root of the problem. The positive aspect is that you've just been taught a lesson, and you can move on once you've learned that lesson. In the case of drunk driving and killing someone-- obviously you fucked up because you drove while drunk, but why didn't you stop yourself from driving drunk? Why were you drunk in the first place? etc.
For negative thoughts about things that can't be changed, that is simply a matter of perspective. You can put a positive (or non-negative) spin to anything.
So yes, you can spin that or change your perspective like you say, but that gets to my point: it just verges on self-delusion, minimization, and such. How do you know you aren’t lying to yourself for selfish relief? Knowing yourself enough to know when you are doing that is where the real skill is. This simple framework doesn’t help with that.
> According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts.
There is no link to the alleged NSF work (as a funding organization, it is unlikely they'd be doing this sort of research), and despite the claim being repeated around the web, there is apparently no legitimate source for it: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2012/05/09/th... .
It is also a funny coincidence that seconds-per-day is a multiple of a 14.4k baud rate.
I never meditated, but I can easily stare at wall clock or cursor blinking for few minutes, not experiencing inner visual or acoustic ‘things’.
Edit: btw, I began to do that after reading Colin Wilson’s “Spider World” in ‘00s, where mind control was described in a scifi series. Didn’t know it, but now looks like consciousness problems are his main interest.
Instructions unclear, ended up spending the day wallowing in a feedback loop of negative thoughts that has now only been amplified by noticing I'm so useless that I can't even open up vim to write about it.
There are lots of ways to potentially "stop negative thoughts", sometimes taking a caffeine pill can be enough (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28455046) and sometimes forcing your brain to slow down by writing things works. It's the very first step though, taking any action that has any chance to move you out of the loop, that seems the most insurmountable when you're inside the loop. I'm not sure anyone's figured out a way to make that easier, just ways to avoid falling right back in (ideally indefinitely, such as reliably noticing (easier said than done) you're falling early enough you can take action to right yourself before it seems an insurmountable effort, which is where this/meditation/periodic medication/etc. come in).
This article is nothing but a description of one way to meditate. If you are turned off of the idea of meditation because of some preconceived notion of what it is or how it works I would highly suggest you re-evaluate and look into it again, it's one of the most helpful life tools that anyone can have, and absolutely anyone can do it.
He used to be a member of the Giantbomb team and discussed his experience with meditation on their podcast. He wrote the post after they received an influx of email about the aforementioned discussion. It was nice to see meditation described by an amateur practitioner; I found the advice useful, and it spurred additional interest.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Complete-Meditation-...
Some of my friends and colleagues ask me what is meditation and how to start? And I always say it is about focus and being present. A good example is listening to music - when you are listening and focusing on the beats and thinking about nothing else, you are in a meditative state. Or even eating food. A good one is Raisin meditation -
https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/raisin_meditation
And then people can build from there to a no-external help meditation and focus on breathing etc.
When the Bible says "meditate on the Law" it's definitely not intending one to empty or still one's mind: there are 2 types of meditation in the OT at least 1) involving repetition to oneself, or muttering; 2) involving prayerful consideration. Two different OT Hebrew words, at least, being translated as "meditate". NB I've not studied these in depth.
So even in this very limited field one sees this term is, perhaps unhelpfully, overloaded.
Other than that, we may sometimes be happy, be sad, be angry, be disgusted, be afraid and so on. Just don't linger on one for too long (know that time will help us forget) and that's a good enough approach to manage the emotional flux.
What does any of this even mean?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2012/05/09/th...
Silently in your head, send blessings (joy, happiness, love, inner peace, etc.) to people that you encounter in life and people that are playing a part in your thoughts. Do this whenever you feel the oncoming of an unnecessary negative emotion.
After 30 to 90 days, a new habit will be formed. And, probably, a new default peaceful internal state.