Personal growth: Allowing tomorrow to spoil today July 26, 2018
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in personal development ideas.Tags: inspiration, life, living a day at a time, negative thinking, Overcoming Fear, personal development, personal growth, philosophy, psychology, solving problems, writing
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Unless we believe in the existence of time travel, there is no way the future can physically reach us today, yet we often do allow tomorrow to be with us today on the level of thought.
Inviting tomorrow to be with us today is mostly harmless if we restrict the practice to optimistic thinking about what tomorrow will hold.
But more often than not the experience is not positive, and is instead detrimental; because instead of optimism, we often project our fears and negative thinking.
We sometimes tend to forward-think a current fear, serious problem, or significant personal challenge not only into tomorrow, but into our overall future in its totality.
We fearfully think that whatever our problem is, that it will never go away, that it will never be solved.
This harmful thinking tendency can result from focussing to the point of obsession about the existence and parameters of the problem itself instead of taking any action steps, or making even a beginning intellectual effort towards considering possible solutions to the problem.
“What’s the use?”
We all can get trapped into this loop, particularly if we are fatigued, “stressed out” or at a low energy level due to unhealthy eating habits, or insufficient sleep.
For each of us to break this habit will take a lot of internal work.
It’s an ongoing process, but starts with recognizing the logical reality that most of our problems, even the very tough ones, have some form of solution.
— Dennis Mellersh
Personal growth: Some thoughts on positive thinking May 11, 2018
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in personal development ideas.Tags: life, negative thinking, personal development, philosophy, positive thinking, psychology, Riichard Carlson, solving problems, the power of moods, writing
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In his book, You Can Be Happy No Matter What, Richard Carlson offers a critique of the “positive thinking” concept and suggests that, “A positive thinker is constantly under pressure to produce only positive thoughts, which takes enormous effort and concentration, leaving little energy for new and creative thoughts.”
Carlson’s opinion in this respect, is based to a large extent on his view that positive thinking’s opposite, negative thinking, arises mostly from our moods, in this case, being in a low mood.
The low mood makes our negatives thoughts seem very real because while in a low mood we will find it very difficult to see the world from anything but a dark, depressed viewpoint.
A key point Carlson makes is that whatever it is we think about, such as a financial challenge, it will be easier to find solutions when we are in a higher mood as our minds will be more clear and open to more possibilities.
The problem itself does not change, but solutions are not likely to appear very easily, if at all, when are thinking is clouded by a dark mood. And when in these dim moods, no amount of forced positive affirmation will make a solution more likely.
Carlson emphasizes, “The only feelings you will ever experience in a low mood are negative feelings; thus it makes no sense to trust or act on those feelings.”
Postpone your problem solving efforts because “The solution is to wait until the mood rises, which it will, on its own. The less attention you give your thinking in your low moods, the quicker your mood will rise. And at that point, and that point alone, your wiser feelings will surface.” (1)
(1) Richard Carlson, You Can Be Happy No Matter What: Five Principles Your Therapist Never Told you, New World Library, Novato, California, 1997, 141 pages.
Carlson, an author, psychotherapist, and motivational speaker, died at the relatively young age of 47. There is a short article about him on Wikipedia; here’s the link:
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