"Tony was not born optimistic. He practiced it. He put in the effort.
You can do the same."
The phrase "You can do the same" already shows that this person has never dealt with real psychological problems. I wish these self-help gurus would just say "Here is something that works for some people. Try it. Maybe it works and if it doesn't work it's not your fault". Instead you have to defend yourself if the well-meant advice from people doesn't work.
Yes, it’s ironic that the people closest to AI, who should be able to see that the brain is a physical organ like all others, often have the hardest time recognizing that cognitive deficits are as real as physical deficits. Some people can’t “make themselves feel X” any easier than a quadriplegic can dunk a basketball.
I would argue that "You can do the same" means the author is in sales, or at least practicing sales techniques. Now, the author might be doing this for the usual reasons, to sell their program, or the author might be doing this because some people feel that sales techniques are 'inspirational' - a lot of people like to be told on no uncertain terms that they will succeed.
I mean, i'm not personally one of those people who likes 'inspirational' sales programs. Personally, when it comes time for me to do something really difficult, I find it works best if I acknowledge it as really difficult as I'm doing it. I mean, I'm trying to lose weight right now, and it is a very difficult thing - not just for people with serious psychological issues, but for almost everyone.[1] Yes, yes, just eat less and work out more. It is simple but just because something is simple does not make it easy, especially when you are trying to run counter to a drive as strong as the drive to eat more calories than you burn. Really, I think that studying people who competitively hold their breath is... relevant here. Most people simply can't make themselves hold their breath as long as their body could physiologically take it. Now, eating less is... less intense than depriving yourself of oxygen, but as evidenced by the failure rates, it's still going against a very basic drive.
And for me, knowing that I will almost certainly never get a "beach body" and that I'll have to count calories and struggle for the rest of my life just to not continue ballooning outward, I think, is a much better long term solution than thinking that I somehow have some secret knowledge that the 99% doesn't have, or that I'm otherwise sure to succeed. I mean, the biggest danger I see is giving up after having a short-term failure of willpower. Binging one day without tracking and then just throwing up my arms and giving up. If instead of shooting for the beach body, I am simply struggling to not be a blob, and every bit less blob-like I am is progress? That's a better, more realistic long-term goal for me.
But... I might be unusual in that regard. Most people seem to think that having some special knowledge, or believing that they have .01% levels of willpower helps them actually achieve more. "The power of positive thinking" and all that. And maybe it does, for them. And I guess I think that's okay, even though I personally find it super irritating and unhelpful.
They're discussing Cognitive Based Therapy - a technique used (sometimes in concert with medication) for the treatment of real psychological problems.
Caveat Emptor and all that, but if we assume the best intentions of the article's author: they're just giving people tools, and attempting to show that those tools can work. Convincing people that the tools work will require some marketing language and idioms.
Useful framework but the 180 seconds part is false in general. For a typical person with lots of negative thoughts it will take much longer to do the countering exercise at any given time. Once you become good at it though, then it takes no time at all —you counter instinctually and st some you just think positively from the get go. So the 180 seconds part is just the usual title clickbaiting.
Again, useful framework but main problem I have with it is for when the negative thoughts are very real and very deserved. From something small (like you left your dirty dishes in the sink for your partner to deal with) to something large (like you ran somebody and killed them while drunk driving), you screwed up and the thoughts of shame and embarrassment are appropriate. For things you can’t truly rectify (to make an extreme example, like bringing someone back to life that you killed), there is often no amount of positive countering that will overcome it. Similar for things like not liking something about your appearance that can’t be easily changed like your height. No amount of positive countering can undo the fact. It ends up looking a lot like denial, self deception, and minimization to use this framework in these cases.
Respectfully, I disagree. Take your example about drunk driving and killing someone. The pain and suffering that person will experience in the aftermath will be enormous. But you know what? Everything we experience in life is in contrast to our past experiences. It would be likely that person had never experienced such pain, shame, sorrow, and suffering before this experience.
Therefore, every experience of joy they have thereafter will be in contrast to this deep despair. As messed up as it sounds, many times extreme tragedy can lead to more joy and happiness than would be possible otherwise. Simply because they have more awareness and appreciation than they did in the past.
Your examples don't fit the use-case of the framework, which is for chronic negative thinking, for when you wake up and everything is wrong, or if you're easily triggered by one negative thought which sends you into a tunnel of negative thinking. Most people don't think of negative examples separately-- for example, losing your job is not usually related to how short you are, but most people will vaguely correlate the two, if they're in a bad state, and conclude there might be something inherently wrong with who they are.
When something has gone wrong, one can still think positively about the situation, but the framework to use in that case is to simply ask 'why' over and over again until you've found the true root of the problem. The positive aspect is that you've just been taught a lesson, and you can move on once you've learned that lesson. In the case of drunk driving and killing someone-- obviously you fucked up because you drove while drunk, but why didn't you stop yourself from driving drunk? Why were you drunk in the first place? etc.
For negative thoughts about things that can't be changed, that is simply a matter of perspective. You can put a positive (or non-negative) spin to anything.
The article begins with a rather dubious "citation":
> According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts.
There is no link to the alleged NSF work (as a funding organization, it is unlikely they'd be doing this sort of research), and despite the claim being repeated around the web, there is apparently no legitimate source for it: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2012/05/09/th... .
> Step 1: Take out a piece of paper or open a writing software on your computer or mobile
Instructions unclear, ended up spending the day wallowing in a feedback loop of negative thoughts that has now only been amplified by noticing I'm so useless that I can't even open up vim to write about it.
There are lots of ways to potentially "stop negative thoughts", sometimes taking a caffeine pill can be enough (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28455046) and sometimes forcing your brain to slow down by writing things works. It's the very first step though, taking any action that has any chance to move you out of the loop, that seems the most insurmountable when you're inside the loop. I'm not sure anyone's figured out a way to make that easier, just ways to avoid falling right back in (ideally indefinitely, such as reliably noticing (easier said than done) you're falling early enough you can take action to right yourself before it seems an insurmountable effort, which is where this/meditation/periodic medication/etc. come in).
Meditating isn't magic, and it's not hard. It's just practicing exercises that can have an effect on your mental state, when you do them often enough you can end up training yourself to have more control over your mental state. You don't have to "get meditation right" to be able to be doing it. When you meditate your mind will wander, that's normal, when you meditate you may not become relaxed, that's normal, when you meditate you may not be able to let go of anxious or panic inducing thoughts, that's normal. The trick to meditation is doing it anyway and not having expectations about it, which, ironically, is how you get better at it and you get better at letting go of unwanted thoughts and at settling your mind into calmness, etc.
This article is nothing but a description of one way to meditate. If you are turned off of the idea of meditation because of some preconceived notion of what it is or how it works I would highly suggest you re-evaluate and look into it again, it's one of the most helpful life tools that anyone can have, and absolutely anyone can do it.
I have been meditating for 6 months now and the actual breakthrough came with the realization that meditation was not about "doing" rather "letting it be". So, no more struggling with trying to calm my mind and rather letting things be as they are. Now while I have gotten better, there are days when I struggle but now there is no more frustration about things not working.
Some of my friends and colleagues ask me what is meditation and how to start? And I always say it is about focus and being present. A good example is listening to music - when you are listening and focusing on the beats and thinking about nothing else, you are in a meditative state. Or even eating food. A good one is Raisin meditation -
I suspect a problem lies in the terminology, people often think meditation means solely "transcendental meditation" wherein the object is to completely empty the mind. But meditation covers several distinct mental disciplines.
When the Bible says "meditate on the Law" it's definitely not intending one to empty or still one's mind: there are 2 types of meditation in the OT at least 1) involving repetition to oneself, or muttering; 2) involving prayerful consideration. Two different OT Hebrew words, at least, being translated as "meditate". NB I've not studied these in depth.
So even in this very limited field one sees this term is, perhaps unhelpfully, overloaded.
“Wanting has to go. Wanting to be free from something that is not there is what you call "sorrow.” Wanting to be free from sorrow is sorrow. There is no other sorrow. You don't want to be free from sorrow. You just think about sorrow, without acting. Your thinking endlessly about being free from sorrow is only more material for sorrow. Thinking does not put an end to sorrow. Sorrow is there for you as long as you think. There is actually no sorrow there to be free from. Thinking about and struggling against "sorrow" is sorrow. Since you can't stop thinking, and thinking is sorrow, you will always suffer. There is no way out, no escape.”
― U.G. Krishnamurti, Mind Is a Myth
I believe that it's not too bad to let negative thoughts pass through our stream of consciousness everyday. I mean, it's part of being human to have different kinds of emotion, right? The intervention is necessary ONLY IF one feels like negative thoughts are occupying too much of his/her mind space and is debilitating his/her day-to-day functions.
Other than that, we may sometimes be happy, be sad, be angry, be disgusted, be afraid and so on. Just don't linger on one for too long (know that time will help us forget) and that's a good enough approach to manage the emotional flux.
>According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts.
Here's one trick to get out of a "suffering state" and get to a "beautiful state":
Silently in your head, send blessings (joy, happiness, love, inner peace, etc.) to people that you encounter in life and people that are playing a part in your thoughts. Do this whenever you feel the oncoming of an unnecessary negative emotion.
After 30 to 90 days, a new habit will be formed. And, probably, a new default peaceful internal state.
For more of the science behind approaches like this check out the first four chapters of 'Hardwiring Happiness' [0] and try the exercises listed in the book. It sounded like fluff when I first came across it but so far it's helped me relate to perhaps unsavoury mind states in more healthy ways.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|7 years ago|reply
You can do the same."
The phrase "You can do the same" already shows that this person has never dealt with real psychological problems. I wish these self-help gurus would just say "Here is something that works for some people. Try it. Maybe it works and if it doesn't work it's not your fault". Instead you have to defend yourself if the well-meant advice from people doesn't work.
[+] [-] ggg9990|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsc|7 years ago|reply
I mean, i'm not personally one of those people who likes 'inspirational' sales programs. Personally, when it comes time for me to do something really difficult, I find it works best if I acknowledge it as really difficult as I'm doing it. I mean, I'm trying to lose weight right now, and it is a very difficult thing - not just for people with serious psychological issues, but for almost everyone.[1] Yes, yes, just eat less and work out more. It is simple but just because something is simple does not make it easy, especially when you are trying to run counter to a drive as strong as the drive to eat more calories than you burn. Really, I think that studying people who competitively hold their breath is... relevant here. Most people simply can't make themselves hold their breath as long as their body could physiologically take it. Now, eating less is... less intense than depriving yourself of oxygen, but as evidenced by the failure rates, it's still going against a very basic drive.
And for me, knowing that I will almost certainly never get a "beach body" and that I'll have to count calories and struggle for the rest of my life just to not continue ballooning outward, I think, is a much better long term solution than thinking that I somehow have some secret knowledge that the 99% doesn't have, or that I'm otherwise sure to succeed. I mean, the biggest danger I see is giving up after having a short-term failure of willpower. Binging one day without tracking and then just throwing up my arms and giving up. If instead of shooting for the beach body, I am simply struggling to not be a blob, and every bit less blob-like I am is progress? That's a better, more realistic long-term goal for me.
But... I might be unusual in that regard. Most people seem to think that having some special knowledge, or believing that they have .01% levels of willpower helps them actually achieve more. "The power of positive thinking" and all that. And maybe it does, for them. And I guess I think that's okay, even though I personally find it super irritating and unhelpful.
[1]https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2015.3027...
[+] [-] falcolas|7 years ago|reply
Caveat Emptor and all that, but if we assume the best intentions of the article's author: they're just giving people tools, and attempting to show that those tools can work. Convincing people that the tools work will require some marketing language and idioms.
[+] [-] bayonetz|7 years ago|reply
Again, useful framework but main problem I have with it is for when the negative thoughts are very real and very deserved. From something small (like you left your dirty dishes in the sink for your partner to deal with) to something large (like you ran somebody and killed them while drunk driving), you screwed up and the thoughts of shame and embarrassment are appropriate. For things you can’t truly rectify (to make an extreme example, like bringing someone back to life that you killed), there is often no amount of positive countering that will overcome it. Similar for things like not liking something about your appearance that can’t be easily changed like your height. No amount of positive countering can undo the fact. It ends up looking a lot like denial, self deception, and minimization to use this framework in these cases.
[+] [-] iamcasen|7 years ago|reply
Therefore, every experience of joy they have thereafter will be in contrast to this deep despair. As messed up as it sounds, many times extreme tragedy can lead to more joy and happiness than would be possible otherwise. Simply because they have more awareness and appreciation than they did in the past.
[+] [-] creep|7 years ago|reply
When something has gone wrong, one can still think positively about the situation, but the framework to use in that case is to simply ask 'why' over and over again until you've found the true root of the problem. The positive aspect is that you've just been taught a lesson, and you can move on once you've learned that lesson. In the case of drunk driving and killing someone-- obviously you fucked up because you drove while drunk, but why didn't you stop yourself from driving drunk? Why were you drunk in the first place? etc.
For negative thoughts about things that can't be changed, that is simply a matter of perspective. You can put a positive (or non-negative) spin to anything.
[+] [-] miles|7 years ago|reply
> According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts.
There is no link to the alleged NSF work (as a funding organization, it is unlikely they'd be doing this sort of research), and despite the claim being repeated around the web, there is apparently no legitimate source for it: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2012/05/09/th... .
[+] [-] wruza|7 years ago|reply
It is also a funny coincidence that seconds-per-day is a multiple of a 14.4k baud rate.
[+] [-] Jach|7 years ago|reply
Instructions unclear, ended up spending the day wallowing in a feedback loop of negative thoughts that has now only been amplified by noticing I'm so useless that I can't even open up vim to write about it.
There are lots of ways to potentially "stop negative thoughts", sometimes taking a caffeine pill can be enough (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28455046) and sometimes forcing your brain to slow down by writing things works. It's the very first step though, taking any action that has any chance to move you out of the loop, that seems the most insurmountable when you're inside the loop. I'm not sure anyone's figured out a way to make that easier, just ways to avoid falling right back in (ideally indefinitely, such as reliably noticing (easier said than done) you're falling early enough you can take action to right yourself before it seems an insurmountable effort, which is where this/meditation/periodic medication/etc. come in).
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|7 years ago|reply
This article is nothing but a description of one way to meditate. If you are turned off of the idea of meditation because of some preconceived notion of what it is or how it works I would highly suggest you re-evaluate and look into it again, it's one of the most helpful life tools that anyone can have, and absolutely anyone can do it.
[+] [-] thisisit|7 years ago|reply
Some of my friends and colleagues ask me what is meditation and how to start? And I always say it is about focus and being present. A good example is listening to music - when you are listening and focusing on the beats and thinking about nothing else, you are in a meditative state. Or even eating food. A good one is Raisin meditation -
https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/raisin_meditation
And then people can build from there to a no-external help meditation and focus on breathing etc.
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|7 years ago|reply
When the Bible says "meditate on the Law" it's definitely not intending one to empty or still one's mind: there are 2 types of meditation in the OT at least 1) involving repetition to oneself, or muttering; 2) involving prayerful consideration. Two different OT Hebrew words, at least, being translated as "meditate". NB I've not studied these in depth.
So even in this very limited field one sees this term is, perhaps unhelpfully, overloaded.
[+] [-] sonnhy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsalvatore|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] potatote|7 years ago|reply
Other than that, we may sometimes be happy, be sad, be angry, be disgusted, be afraid and so on. Just don't linger on one for too long (know that time will help us forget) and that's a good enough approach to manage the emotional flux.
[+] [-] tpeo|7 years ago|reply
What does any of this even mean?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2012/05/09/th...
[+] [-] henryw|7 years ago|reply
Silently in your head, send blessings (joy, happiness, love, inner peace, etc.) to people that you encounter in life and people that are playing a part in your thoughts. Do this whenever you feel the oncoming of an unnecessary negative emotion.
After 30 to 90 days, a new habit will be formed. And, probably, a new default peaceful internal state.
[+] [-] avtar|7 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385347316/
[+] [-] yellowboxtenant|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ifend|7 years ago|reply