Hi everyone! A while back, I posted about the inner work necessary in order to improve your emotional health. (If you’re interested about my journey with inner work, you can find that post here.) In that piece, I mentioned that I would be writing about specific mental work in the future. Well, wait no longer because that day is today! And today, we’re talking about the validity of our thoughts.
It’s common to tell people that all of their feelings are valid. I agree with this perspective. Any feeling you’re having is valid and not something you have immediate control over anyway, so don’t fight your feelings. But if we were to say this about thoughts, I would say that you’ve taken it too far. Not all thoughts are valid interpretations of reality. That’s a hard pill to swallow, because it’s uncomfortable to doubt yourself and your perceptions, especially the ones that have been hanging around for a while.
But it’s important to wrap your head around this concept, because our thoughts create our feelings, in a way. Most often, when it comes to the most negative feelings you can experience, it boils down to your perception of your real life experience, not the experience itself.
This is why a lot of us go to therapy. We need a reframing of our lives, and it’s tough to pull off by yourself. A therapist who’s willing to call you out when you start spouting nonsense is an incredibly valuable resource.
You don’t need to go to therapy in order to get a mental reframe, though. You can spurr one yourself, if you’re willing. All you need is your brain, and a commitment to this practice. Sometimes a journal helps, for those of you who think better when you can get it out on paper. But the point is, this isn’t an expensive thing. It’s cheap to free, and in some cases, if you don’t work on this, it could ultimately cost you your life.
Put it into practice
So what is this magical practice? Well, when a situation arises that makes you feel bad, observe your thoughts. Try to identify which ones connect most to the bad feeling you have, and consider that those are the thoughts that are actually making you feel bad in the first place.
From here, you can analyze them. Are they facts, or are they opinions? If they’re opinions, what can you do to change them, or at least soften them? And if they’re facts, then what can you do to gain perspective on them and look at them from a different direction? Also, some “facts” are just untrue. So let yourself do some fact checking before you get down about them.
Resource Suggestion
It wasn’t until after therapy that I was able to understand this concept, although that’s what we had been working on without my knowing. And what gave me this perspective was a book called “The Voice of Knowledge” by Don Miguel Ruiz.
In the book, he highlights the nature of our brains, how we build our personal narratives, and how we often end up with entire belief structures based off of a strongly held belief that actually is a lie. These things keep us from living our best lives and fulfilling our potential, but they also keep us feeling helpless and hopeless. In short, a wrong belief can ruin your life, and most of us have lots of them.
If you’re looking to go in depth about this subject and how to dismantle your wrong belief structures, I would highly recommend this book. Just reading it brought me a lot of healing and wisdom, and putting his suggestions and guidance into practice gave me a set of tools that I will draw upon for the rest of my life.
And that’s all I have to say about this today, guys. But just remember, if there’s a thought that’s making you feel shame for who you are or hopeless that your situation might ever improve, you don’t have to believe it. Because your thoughts aren’t infallible truth.
