Overcoming Negative Thoughts

Firstly a wonderful passage from Equanimintyandpeace.

I used to think life was ONE LONG EMERGENCY. I still believe life can seriously give hardship. I still “feel” just as I always did. If I was in a war refuge camp with you eating soup made of tree bark and we had hungry crying children around us…that IS a problem. I don’t think just anything and everything painful can be “wiped away” so easily after a 30 minute meditation, or a weekend retreat in nature, or some book on quotes that does magical things, but I think we can institute choices that can make our lives easier.

Life can be a difficult battlefield of problems, but I think we have some control over the degree of suffering we subject ourselves to. Once you realize that, you can really learn to live simply and calmly and rediscover the magic you first probably saw in your youth....

It is only through conscious intervention that you can make your mind change course from automatically recycling negative thoughts. This is just like your breathing. You breathe automatically, but you CAN choose to influence your breathing, you can hold your breath if you are going to dive deep in the water, or you can consciously “slow down” your breath if you are relaxing in meditation and prayer.

Once I realized I did in fact have “some” ability to control my own thoughts, I consciously redirected the thoughts to positive uplifting notions. I noted that I had built such a large ego over the years that the collapse of it dragged me down in a catastrophic fashion. A big ego is different from self esteem. Both were destroyed, but I learned to regain self esteem through positive affirmations and knowing that the negative thoughts are not reality. I believe having a positive self esteem is important, a big ego…not so much.

Equanimintyandpeace