How to Stop Hurting Yourself With Negative Thoughts

The power of an orderly mind.

Would you let just anyone into your home?

No, wouldn’t you?

Then why do you let any thoughts into your brain?

Your evil thoughts are far worse than many annoying guests who show up unannounced and pretend to be annoying: they are like silent assassins who sneak into your mind, steal your peace and leave, leaving you angry, grumpy, diminished: ruining your day.

CS Lewis wrote in Book V of the Chronicles of Narnia something like this,

“Dedication to business is the root of prosperity, but those who ask questions that do not concern them are steering the ship of folly toward the rock of destitution.”

We can no longer leave the door open to any thought that wants to enter our inner world and turn everything upside down.

As Lewis says, we have to mind our own business and not get distracted by things that don’t concern us or worry about problems that ONLY exist in our heads.

How to achieve this?

The answer is: minimizing the toxic habit that damages your mind the most: negativity.

Let’s start

When you wake up, you face three spirits.

• The spirit of blasphemy.

That suggests the opposite of what you had planned to do with the day using all kinds of disempowering thoughts like, “Why are you going to do this or that if you never get anything right, Loserrrr.”

• The spirit of the world.

That encourages you to let your senses lead you down the road of pleasure with thoughts like, “One more cupcake for breakfast, and on Monday, we’ll go on a diet and join the Gym.”

• And the spirit of goodwill.

What inspires us to be better and rise above the mundane and live in the faith that we are worthy people who can achieve anything, thoughts like, “Today is going to be a great day, and I’m going to choose me over that person who makes me gaslight. So I’m not even going to think about her.”

If you follow the first two spirits, your soul will dry, and you will be dissatisfied, sad, and discouraged.

But if you follow the last one, you’ll have the energy and passion for facing the day effectively.

How to focus on the spirit of goodwill?

Use your ability to discern.

Let’s start by defining what discernment is.

“To discern is to distinguish by means of the intellect one thing from another or several things from each other.”

And this is important because it is not so easy to distinguish between the thoughts of the three spirits.

Many thoughts appear to be positive, but deep down, they hide the seed of laziness, like when you say to yourself, “I am going to study this and that to feel more prepared.” And deep down, you know that you should already be implementing what you have learned in the real world.

Stop consuming tons of information that generates paralysis by analysis. It is much better to iterate.

“Iterate: perform a certain action several times.”

Iterating implies failing over and over again until you achieve your goal. And that is the best way to learn.

Warning!

Now you know the secret to improving your life.

All you have to do is make a conscious effort to discern between the types of thoughts you have and choose the third type: the ones that help you progress, and then iterate until you achieve your goals.

But watch out! When things start to go well for you, don’t fall into the traps of the ego.

Ego is a little voice that tells you that you deserve a prize.

And sometimes you will deserve a prize but sometimes you will not. And if you start to reward yourself without having earned it, the dopamine you will release in your brain will lead you to continue rewarding yourself without reason. And when you want to realize it, you’ll be back on the couch, watching TV and gobbling one pizza after another.

And you don’t want to be Homer Simpson, do you?

Don’t get on the sh*t elevator.

Engrave this on the tablets of your heart.

“All disorderly acts are born of disorderly minds.”

I don’t know people with messy lives who have an orderly mind. Do you?

All recurring thoughts have consequences in your material life.

If you are all day long having toxic thoughts, your life is sure to be emotionally contaminated by toxic behaviors such as addictions.

• You don’t put on 20 kilos overnight. One day, you start eating industrial pastries for dinner, and when a year goes by, Hello, Diabetes type 2! and you wonder how you ended up like that.

The answer is: you take the sh*t elevator.

• You don’t get addicted to sex overnight. One day you start by having a little fling and cheating on your partner, and when ten years go by, you wonder how you ended up using Tinder to have several parallel relationships because no one fills you up.

The answer is again because you got on the sh*t elevator.

• One doesn’t become an alcoholic overnight. One day you start thinking, “a little wine after work can’t be that bad if Sarah Jessica Parker does it on Sex in the City,” Ten years later, you wonder why you ended up homeless drinking wine out of a carton on a park bench.

Again the answer is …. Bingo! Because you got on the sh*t elevator.

And you don’t want to get on the sh*t elevator to descend to hell slowly, do you?

If you don’t want to, you’ll have to cultivate an orderly mind.

The power of an orderly mind

When you have a problem, you can do two things: play the victim or ask yourself how to get out of the predicament.

The first option is the equivalent of feeling bad about your body and curing the anxiety by eating hamburgers: all you do is make the problem bigger. And the second is like going on a diet and joining the GYM.

You have to start USING YOUR HEAD; ask yourself the hows instead of victimizing yourself with the whys.

You don’t just have to get your body in shape, but your mind.

Discernment is not only selecting and discarding; it reflects and evaluates the possibilities before doing it.

The first thing to do is be vigilant, like when you meditate. You have to carry out a contemplative vigilance of your thoughts to begin identifying those thoughts that you believe to be dangerous and evaluate them to replace them with more positive ones as the days go by.

As we have seen in previous articles, evil thoughts have a knock-on effect and start a domino effect in your life.

Overeating awakens your laziness, and your inactivity can provoke your lust, and after wasting time and not doing what you should, you can generate envy for those who did do things right.

And, if you don’t stop it, this cycle can repeat ad infinitum.

Finally

When you don’t know if a thought is good or bad, notice how it makes you feel.

• If it takes away your peace, it is terrible.

These thoughts lead you to bitterness and desolation by repeating them. You don’t feel like anything.

• If it gives you long-term peace and stability, it is usually good.

These thoughts lead you to quiet joy and personal satisfaction through repetition. They make you want to do good things.

In short, evil thoughts make you sad in the long run, and good ideas make you happy.

You are not going to eliminate negativity in one day, so be patient and hopeful because, as Haruki Murakami said in his book 1Q84,

“You live with your eyes on the hopes you are given, on the hopes you harbor, hopes are like fuel. You can’t live without them.”

Do you want to empower your life?

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