Tips for thinking positive?

[mitzikilgore]

It sounds like you are doing all the right things - yoga, walking etc... But the advice to your thread was really interesting. Music helps me when I am obsessing on something. The person who said to write it down for "later" was interesting - that may work. Driving doesn't work for me because I find that is when my mind wanders to **** that pisses me off! Good luck to you!

[Dagorath]

Treat the source, not the symptoms. Talk, journal writing, music, etc.. Those are just bandaids because they don't accopmlish anything.

 

I don't know what you are struggling with in particular, but you need to face THAT issue - head on. If it is something you can't do anything about, then you need to distract yourself with something that gives you a feeling of progress.

 

Let me explain. When you write in a journal, talk to people, listen to music, etc.. You are just dwelling, sulking, and compounding the issue into this ball of anger that never gets sorted out. You're just tying mental knots in the issue.

 

If you want to be better and move on, you either untangle the knot, or you go and do something positive that has nothing to do with the knot. Take for instance, if you go workout with a friend - you probably won't be thinking about your issue, you'll be thinking about how heavy this weight is that you might drop on your face if you stop paying attention to that.

 

These kind of things are distractionary, but they are also forward moving progress so they can help you by giving you something to hope for instead of something to be sad about. The mind is only capable of focusing on so many things. The goal here is not to focus on what is bad until you can work it out.. The goal is to distract yourself with something good.

 

I often find that optimists are just putting bandaids on an unresolved past. They just pretend until it goes away, or they become oblivious to it. I don't find this method particularly attractive, because I have been a pessimist for so long. In recent years i've tried optimism, but found it to be the pursuit of the ignorant who; in effect, are putting a finger in each ear and going, "lalalalalal" until problems go away.

 

This method is wreckless too. I'm not suggesting you pretend it's not there. I'm saying you make it unimportant compared to something positive in your life. I call it, becoming the Rational Optimist.

 

Good luck man.

[SpiralOut]

Treat the source, not the symptoms. Talk, journal writing, music, etc.. Those are just bandaids because they don't accopmlish anything.

 

I don't know what you are struggling with in particular, but you need to face THAT issue - head on. If it is something you can't do anything about, then you need to distract yourself with something that gives you a feeling of progress.

 

Let me explain. When you write in a journal, talk to people, listen to music, etc.. You are just dwelling, sulking, and compounding the issue into this ball of anger that never gets sorted out. You're just tying mental knots in the issue.

 

If you want to be better and move on, you either untangle the knot, or you go and do something positive that has nothing to do with the knot. Take for instance, if you go workout with a friend - you probably won't be thinking about your issue, you'll be thinking about how heavy this weight is that you might drop on your face if you stop paying attention to that.

 

Thank you. I agree. I need to treat the source. I wish I knew what that was, though. Two years of soul-searching and I cannot figure out where this anger is coming from.

 

It was terrible for a while. Then for the past two years I've covered it up and managed it by distracting myself by moving forward in my life, hoping that fulfilling some goals would remove the anger. It helped for a while.

 

Now it's coming back again. I think I know a way to work through it. It's unconventional but it might work.