Can we shape our thoughts?
Can we shape thoughts? Thinking is like breathing: most of the time you do it without realizing it, however, they help us make decisions. In fact, without our internal mental processes, we would have great difficulty coping with certain circumstances, especially the most uncertain ones.
- One of the most important aspects of our thinking is the style we use to explain the events that affect us.
- The model developed by Martin Seligman analyzes how we are affected by the permanence or duration of the impact of the events.
- The penetrability or extent that we attribute.
- For its purposes and personal personalization or degree of responsibility that we are willing to assume for what happened.
The more permeable we are to these filters, the more dogmatically we will maintain irrational thoughts and philosophies of life, which is the main source of emotional and behavioral disorders. Paul Watzlawick, a psychologist and professor of psychology at Stanford University in the United States, describes how the consequences of some more unconscious thoughts can become negative.
We forget that we have more power over ourselves than we believe, the things that happen to us are not the ones that cause us discomfort, but the thoughts we have about them, the way we interpret them, therefore, so that we can judge the circumstances that affect us. we are preferable explanations that minimize the impact on our well-being or facilitate the acceptance of the event.
Havelock Ellis says: “The place where optimism flourishes the most is the house of fools. “
Albert Einstein says, “Well, I’d rather be a crazy optimist than a reasonable pessimist. “
-Alice Calaprice, Einstein Quote (1966) –
Thought can be understood as behavior, as well as belief, and just as we do with driving, we can also shape thoughts, for this it is essential to understand how they happen, they are not concrete thing that can be directly altered. but appear due to an interaction between an organism and an environment.
Therefore, to change the way we think, we need to know the context and consequences of our thoughts, that is, whether or not they help us.
We cannot unlearn a certain way of thinking, but we can learn to do it differently, there are behaviors that we learn not to do, but that do not disappear from our repertoire of actions, we no longer do them. . The same goes for thoughts: we learn to change what we say by exercising conscious control over our minds.
If our thoughts are inflexible, dogmatic or absolute and expressed in terms of obligation, necessity or demand, in general, they will provoke inappropriate negative emotions (guilt, anger, anxiety, fear), these emotions can interfere with the achievement of our goals. , in addition to generating behavioral changes, such as isolation or avoidance or escape behaviors.
To shape uncompromising thoughts, we must assume that what we are thinking right now will not disappear completely. We must abandon the strategy of eliminating or replacing thoughts altogether. Instead, we need to be more flexible and interpretive, reshaping our beliefs to move. away from its content.
This undermines the influence of irrational thoughts on our behavior and mood, so secrecy is in establishing a distance between what we think and who we are.
For example, to try to change our way of thinking, we have to ask ourselves: what useful thoughts could we add to our repertoire? What thoughts open rational perspectives and more flexible responses?
Thoughts can be our greatest allies or our worst enemies, it depends on ourselves on the relationship we establish with them, and we must not forget that through our mental processes we can identify what is causing us discomfort.
Our thoughts have a lot to tell us if we ask the right questions. Why does an idea bother us so much?
The problem with thinking is that we have very limited control over it, it is impossible to decide not to think about a memory or to refrain from thinking altogether, the symbolic relationships that connect our thoughts to each other force us to accept that they can always come back, even if we don’t want to. .
To think rationally is to think in relative terms, to express yourself in terms of desires and preferences rather than absolute requirements. When people think healthily, even when they don’t get what they want, the negative feelings that these situations cause don’t stop them from achieving new goals or goals.
Therefore, reflecting thoughts and thinking in a balanced way is something that is available to anyone who devotes the most to it, if you make an intelligent effort your thoughts will become your best allies.