Quiet your thoughts: you control them, not they control you Why is this important? Let's imagine that our thoughts, our emotions and our behavior are three little people inside of us. You can, of course, not delve into their problems at all; you can think that each of them lives their own life, independently of each other and, moreover, independently of us. It seems that everything is simple, convenient and understandable; you don’t have to worry about your inner world, don’t think about who depends on whom and who controls whom. I assure you: it will be easy until the first stress. But then it will be very sad. After all, when we encounter any life situation, we first of all perceive, evaluate, and interpret it. What is it like from our point of view? Difficult, sharp, hopeless? The interpretation of events that happen to us or around us awakens a response within us, i.e. some feeling, some emotion. If we change this perception, then we will react to the same situation differently. So, any hopeless situation becomes simply difficult, or, conversely, any little thing suddenly begins to seem like a serious obstacle to your cherished dream. What is stress? How do we cope with difficulties? Are heavy thoughts depressing you and tears are flowing? Do you drink buckets of valerian or something stronger? Well, then events develop according to a negative scenario, and out of a hundred possible scenarios, out of habit, we choose the worst. But neither sedatives nor strong drinks will solve our problems. Instead of this useless activity, I propose to clean your inner space and sweep out all mental garbage from it. A simple exercise will help us with this - “Broom”. Just imagine, you are walking along a beautiful autumn alley. Ahead, a red-yellow maple leaf flies in the air, spinning and pirouetteing. It falls at your feet, and immediately someone carefully sweeps it onto the lawn with a broom. The path is clear, walk and enjoy! Or do you like to wade through a pile of dry leaves? Yes, in sunny, warm weather it’s nice to listen to the rustling of fallen leaves under your feet. But if it’s cold, wet, and all these leaves are mixed with water and dirt, then you walk along this dull, sad alley, cursing the weather, getting irritated by the slush and garbage. What a dirty trick! Someone should clean up here or something! The same thing happens with heavy, sad thoughts, which aggravate an already bad mood, and even make you physically suffer. My head hurts, my heart is pounding, my blood pressure is jumping, my stomach refuses to work and rebels. Have you ever tried to think constructively or act effectively in this state? So, if your imagination wants to do something instead of painting scary, gloomy and sad pictures, keep it busy with useful work. Let it take a broom and, as soon as an unpleasant thought comes to you, it will immediately sweep it aside, just as the same janitor sweeps fallen leaves onto the lawn. Negative thoughts are garbage, not truth. Living with them all the time means floundering in a quagmire, falling deeper and deeper into it, harming your health, wasting precious time that no one will get back. And if you need a resource to solve a problem, where can you get it? After all, he was already gone to worry. Well, of course, all the problems can be resolved on their own while we swallow valerian along with our tears, but you still can’t get time back, and you can’t restore your nerves. Isn't it better to immediately cope with your restless imagination, and spend time and energy on something useful and pleasant? But this is not the most serious problem; there is a tougher nut to crack – irrational beliefs. How to figure it out? We'll talk about this in one of the following posts. In the meantime, please tell us in the comments how you deal with negative thoughts. In general, do they visit you in stressful situations? If the article turned out to be interesting and useful for you, please click the “say thank you” button under!