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

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If all of these thoughts were empowering, non-stop thinking wouldn’t be an issue! But far too often, thoughts lead you astray, bring you down, or obstruct your ability to do things that you care about. 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. 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. 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.

But thoughts are also important, and we do have some control over them. So it’s time to start exploring the topic of developing better thoughts. The gist of The Work is simple: Believing your thoughts often leads to suffering. This means suffering is optional, because your thoughts are not always true. You can choose not to get swept away by your thoughts.

Don’t Believe Everything you Think

One minute you might be feeling down about a challenge at work, and the next minute you’re laughing at the joke of a friend.

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: Given the differing nature of thoughts, it’s helpful to equip yourself with multiple strategies to process them. But when you hold on to your thoughts as if they are the utmost truth, unpleasant feelings are sure to follow.

Come back when you're older

To avoid this scenario, you can equip yourself with the tools to deal with these thoughts more effectively. Suffering is Optional (Two Strategies to Let Go) 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. The human mind is constantly processing the world around it. Each day is a non-stop barrage of thoughts, questions, and observations. The second reason why not believing everything you think is difficult is that we’re often unaware of our thoughts. Most of our thoughts arise automatically, and we instantly believe and embody them. We rarely recognize them as thoughts at all. Becoming more aware of your thoughts requires mindfulness, journaling, or the help of a cognitive therapist.