Given the current situation in our world, and the increased stress and anxiety that people are experiencing, I wanted to share some of the things I do to manage my mental landscape. Some of you might be wondering what qualifies me to talk about this topic—fair enough. In this four-part series, I will be outlining what I did to transform my thinking in order to conquer both clinical depression and OCD. In other words, my “credentials” are experiential in nature.
This article is part two of four. In the first article, I focused on how I changed my actions, and how that, in turn, affected my thinking. In this article, I will begin to outline some of the specific things I did to directly change my thinking. Specifically, I will share one important fact I discovered and then describe the tool I used to work with that fact.
First off, the fact:
Human beings, almost universally, complain about the incessant, negative messaging that comes from the “chatterbox” in their heads. We wonder why our internal dialogue is so self-critical, and filled with messages of fear. And those who suffer with depression and anxiety disorders can tell you that their “chatterboxes” are on steroids!
I won’t go into the research in this video, but some scientists, including Dr. Bruce Lipton, the author of “The Biology of Belief,” postulate that the output of our internal chatterbox comes from early life programming of our subconscious minds that came about from observing and listening to the people around us and adopting their beliefs, views, and words as truth. If this is correct, it becomes obvious, that many of us were exposed to a lot of negativity and false information—from numerous sources—during our formative years.
Regardless of the genesis of chatterbox output, the fact remains that, for many of us, the output is mostly negative in nature.
Now, I’d like to talk about the tool:
One day, in the midst of my depression and OCD—trying to make sense out of my own thinking patterns, I decided to ask a few “normal” people about their internal chatterboxes, to determine how their thoughts were different from mine. What I heard astonished me! Person after person told me, straight up, that they had the same kinds of thoughts as I did. One close friend even laughed when I shared some examples of my strange thinking with him, saying, “If you think those are weird, let me share some of my doozies with you!” Even today, I laugh when I think of that long-ago conversation, but will always be grateful for an open and honest friend.
Now, as I talked with each of those “normal” people, I also asked them how they dealt with their negative, fearful, and troubling thoughts. All of their responses had a common theme. I heard comments like: “I don’t pay any attention to such thoughts—they’re nonsense.” and “They don’t mean anything—they’re not real—they’re not me.” One person said something that really resonated with me: “I treat such thoughts like the wind and let them blow right through me–out of my mind—and out of my life.”
In one way or another, each of these “normal” people basically told me that they simply ignored their chatterbox and changed their train of thought to something more positive or productive.
I wrote all of these distinctions and ideas down in my journal and determined that I would start thinking like a “normal” person.
First, I made a list of “Productive Thinking Topics”—positive quotes, hobbies, interests, things I was grateful for, so I could “change my thinking channel” to one of these whenever my chatterbox started spewing negative or disturbing thoughts.
Then, I worked hard at simply letting negative, fearful, and troubling thoughts pass—without giving them any attention—not considering them, not arguing with them—simply “letting them blow right through me–out of my mind—and out of my life, while constantly changing the channel back to one of my “Productive Thinking Topics.”
As a result, I learned, very quickly, that the less attention I paid to negative and troublesome thoughts, the less power they had over me!
You’ve all heard the saying “When the student is ready the teacher will appear.” Well, when I was right in the midst of all these discussions with friends, making new distinctions and practicing “changing channels” this happened:
I was commuting home from work and listening to my favorite radio program at that time, “Our Changing World,” presented by the late Earl Nightingale. (I actually corresponded with this great man, and later met him, but that is a story for another time.)
The title of that day’s program was “What the Mind Believes.” Given my then current struggles, I was intrigued by that title and listened more carefully than usual.
Earl Nightingale related a story about a workshop a well-known professor delivered to a group of college educators. During that workshop, the professor posed the following question to the participants: “If all the books on the art of moving human beings to action were condensed into one brief statement—what would that statement be?”
A lively discussion ensued, which lasted several hours. In fact, a small group of participants was so intrigued by the question that they continued working on an answer long into the night. The next day, they presented their response.
“What the mind attends to, it considers; what it does not attend to, it dismisses. What the mind attends to continually, it believes. And what the mind believes, it eventually does.”
Wow! Talk about an epiphany—there it was. It’s not so much about what thoughts come through our minds. It’s about which thoughts we choose to attend to and focus on! To this day, I marvel at what I learned about mind management in such a short time.
In closing, I want to reinforce a point I made in my last video. In his landmark book, Psycho Cybernetics, Dr. Maxwell Maltz claimed that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. Subsequent research suggests that may be just a starting point. Regardless, one thing is clear. Maintaining good mental health is a process—not an event. Just like bathing, it is a daily discipline.
I hope this information has been helpful. The next two installments will continue to detail the specific things I did to transform my thinking. Until then, believe that better times lie ahead, and stay well.