Stop thinking and take control of your life.

In this extended Blog we take a look at the idea that thinking excessively doesn’t help you. In the past and indeed still for many people in the West, the idea that you can think your way out of a situation holds great weight.

In fact, much of our stress and pressure that we experience comes from this concept. It comes from the idea that you must ruminate over something until you find the answer. As this happens, the deeper we dig ourselves, igniting an emotional bonfire that can consume our ability to function at home, in work or with friends.

Assisi Therapy is Salisbury uses a blend of Psychotherapy, Counselling and Hypnotherapy to help you channel your precious energy into something positive. Something that will move you forwards in life and help you become something more than your thoughts.

The American philosopher Raplh Waldo Emerson once said: “the ancestor to every action is a thought”

As you think you shall be. Being happy isn’t always easy, in fact it can be one of the great challenges in life.

True maturity means taking responsibility for our own happiness – right now. It means choosing to concentrate on what we have instead of what we lack.

We are all constantly thinking, but because we are always doing it, it’s easy to forget it is happening, and the thinking becomes invisible.

Your thinking will always come back to you as a feeling, since the way you feel is always determined by the thoughts you are thinking. For example, try feeling angry without thinking about something that makes you angry. You can’t do it.

Thinking Turns Events into Problems.

An event is real but it means nothing to you -it is neutral – until you attach to it through your thinking.

For example, think of snow. For some people snow means snowballs, sledges, skiing, and snowmen. For these people snow is cause for great celebration!

For others, however, snow means dead batteries, a slushy mess, cold weather, trouble getting to work and so on. In short, the snow is cause for complaint. The snow itself doesn’t care what you think about it. The snow is neutral. It just exists and goes on being snow. It doesn’t cause the positive or negative reactions and feelings you may have. Only your thinking can do that for you. Your thinking, not the event, causes your emotional responses.

This insight from a long term depressive describes things well:

“Being upset by your own thoughts is similar to writing yourself a nasty letter – and then being offended by that letter!”

You are the manufacturer of your own thoughts. You are the one doing the thinking that’s upsetting you; you are doing it to yourself. Once you start to see that your thoughts are just thoughts, that they are not “reality”, you will be able to dismiss them and not allow them to depress you.

Your thoughts are not real, and they can’t harm you, just as your nightmares are harmless. After all, what is dreaming but thinking while you are asleep?!

 Thoughts grow with attention; the more attention you put on anything that is negative, the worse you will feel. Despite the modern thinking that talking about and working through negative emotions is a good idea, common sense dictates otherwise. After all, people have been working through endless negative emotions for years now – and very few are much better off than when they started, and many are worse off.

You Cannot Think Your Way Out of Depression.

The famous American football coach Vince Lombardi, once said “If you’re doing something wrong, doing it more intensely isn’t going to help”.

 No idea applies better when you are depressed. It’s your thinking that lowered your spirits to begin with; doing more of the same will only make matters worse. Thinking while you are depressed is similar to pouring a bucketful of salt on a deep cut!