Do you control your thoughts or do your thoughts control you?
Throughout
the duration of lockdown I have been reading and studying for my own personal
development. What exactly is personal development? We studied it in school, but
at such a young age I know I personally didn't value developing myself as I
didn't understand quite what that meant. I think the things I have been
learning and researching should be taught in schools as frankly there would a
lot less hate and pain in the world for it. But, it must be taught by someone
that is passionate about self-help and development and not simply the RE or
English teacher that has some free classes in their diary.
That
being said, it is never too late to discover yourself and work on you. Before
now, I have always thought that living my best life and working on myself equalled
going to the gym 5 days a week, or doing my fake tan and nails to feel better
about myself. Yes, these are coping mechanisms and they definitely boost
serotonin levels in your brain, making you feel better as a result, but for me
these were always methods of picking myself up when I was down, which was
actually quite often. How much of us have to have a pamper night once a week or
even crack the bottle open to cope with the weekly stresses we are faced with?
Feeling the need to have to pick yourself up on a weekly basis isn't right.
Even if it is simply one day of the week that you find yourself feeling down,
this totals up to 52 bad days for every week in a year. Think of all of the
good things and memories you could be making in those 52 days. I for one didn't
realise how often I was feeling down until I was forced to sit with myself for
weeks with not many distractions bar the 9-5. I'm not someone that is
clinically depressed either, nor am I going through serious hardship, but I now
see how much happier I could have been.
I know
that life isn't all roses and daisies and that having bad days is inevitable,
as we can't control how every aspect of our life is going to go. What we can
control however, is our mindset. If you gain control of your mind, you can
handle so much more, in a more logical and rational manner. One of the online
courses I have taken up during lockdown is Becca Gillen's 'lockdown
breakthrough' free mindset course. I was a bit sceptical about this course as I
completed the first few sections as there are assignments you have to complete,
disclosing information about how you're feeling -some of those emotions I have
never even let myself think about never mind talk to someone about it. The
assignments don't get feedback either, so I thought 'how is this supposed to
help if they aren't going to tell me what's wrong with the way I'm thinking...'
As I
continued on through the course, I soon figured that by completing the chapters
you begin to analyse your own thoughts and emotions on a deeper level,
understanding now where you are going wrong. These negative thought patterns I
could now notice and am aware of are called 'Cognitive Distortions'. Simply
put, it means that our mind is convincing us of something that is not true. The
exercise for this section stands out to me in particular as it helped me
understand this idea better and actually put it into practice when these
negative thoughts were creeping in. Becca tells you to identify a negative
thought pattern you might be having frequently. Let's take 'I'm not good
enough' for example. Then, write down all of the pieces of evidence you can
find that make this thought true. So you might say 'I failed my
exam, I dropped out of uni, I got dumped'. Then, the next task is to write down
all of the evidence that this is not true. You start off: 'I passed
5 other exams, I got that job, I don't have to be good enough for anyone else'.
Soon, you find this list growing and growing as you think of all of the
evidence that disproves the negative thought you once had and you feel relieved
when you read over this list of now positive affirmations before submitting.
This is
just one simple exercise you can use to stop your subconscious, negative
thought patterns in their tracks and nip them in the bud before you let it
manifest and take another good day from your year. Aim to get those potential
52 days down to as little as possible! You can control it if you put your mind
to it :)
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