Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Suffering

Thought Suppression is Counterproductive

By Leave a Comment

You can’t make a bad thought go away by trying not to think about it.

Pushing away a thought works, but for a little while. Short-term relief is often worse than no relief, sometimes exacerbating the very emotions you’re hoping to veer off.

Most crutches of choice (drugs, alcohol, tobacco, barbiturates, shopping, or high-carbohydrate foods) offer transitory comfort. The immediate pleasure often gives way to long-term despair, which causes repeated use of the same agent. The consequence is addiction. The same is valid for thought suppression.

Studies have revealed that the more you suppress a thought, the stronger its recoil. For instance, smokers suppressing the thought of cigarettes report that the appeal of smoking comes rushing back with even greater power when they let their guard down. Holding back your thoughts will actually make you think about them more once the period of active suppression is over. In other words, suppressing a thought increases your attachment to it.

Persistence creates resistance; the more you try to push thoughts out, the bigger they get. Further, the fleeting relief of thought suppression pushes you away from more effective and lasting approaches, such as gratitude, acceptance, and forgiveness.

Idea for Impact: Suppress Your Thoughts about Suppression

In a world obsessed with positive thinking, many of us have been conditioned to be so averse to “negative emotions” that we don’t recognize them, much less acknowledge them, or give ourselves permission to feel and process them. Thought suppression causes more stress and anxiety than if you confront what you’re trying to forget.

  • Replace unwanted thoughts with thoughts that focus on your goals (e.g., “It feels better to eat a delicious fruit than it does to wolf down a s’more topped with melted chocolate.”)
  • Create an if-then to help you not block unwanted thoughts out but instead plan what you really need to do to act on temptations. Your plans can disrupt the connection between the thought and giving in to temptation. Over time, the thoughts will fade on their own.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Think Your Way Out of a Negative Thought
  2. The Power of Negative Thinking
  3. Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself
  4. Seven Ways to Let Go of Regret
  5. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal

The Secret to Happiness in Relationships is Lowering Your Expectations

By Leave a Comment

Happiness depends not on how well things are going, but on whether things are going better or worse than expected. (A case in point: under-promising and over-delivering is a sure way to build customer loyalty.)

Right-size what you can expect from others. You’d be happier to accept other people’s difficult behaviors when you expect less from them. The instant you feel disappointed because another person didn’t come through for you, remind yourself, “It isn’t for me to have those expectations on her.”

The definitive purpose of moderating your expectations of other people isn’t to give them some sort of pass. Instead, it is to help you take off your rose-colored spectacles and appreciate the being-as-is. This change of attitude helps you moderate the constant frustration—even anger—from those around you.

Idea for Impact: If you have high expectations of other people and they disappoint you, you’re giving them permission to dictate how you’ll feel. That’s a lot of power to give to others.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  2. Change Your Perspective, Change Your Reactions
  3. Affection Is No Defense: Good Intentions Make Excellent Alibis
  4. Release Your Cows … Be Happy
  5. The Surprising Power of Low Expectations: The Secret Weapon to Happiness?

Don’t Be a Prisoner of the Hurt Done to You

By Leave a Comment

The Irish philosopher and poet John O’Donohue writes in Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong (1998,)

Forgiveness is one of the really difficult things in life. The logic of receiving hurt seems to run in the direction of never forgetting either the hurt or the hurter. When you forgive, some deeper, divine generosity takes over. When you can forgive, then you are free. When you cannot forgive, you are a prisoner of the hurt done to you. If you are really disappointed in someone and you become embittered, you become incarcerated inside that feeling. Only the grace of forgiveness can break the straight logic of hurt and embitterment. It gives you a way out, because it places the conflict on a completely different level. In a strange way, it keeps the whole conflict human. You begin to see and understand the conditions, circumstances, or weakness that made the other person act as they did.

Forgiveness begins with recognizing that the pain wrought upon you by someone else stems from her own deep suffering.

In other words, forgiveness is opening up to the insight that, while you are the victim of another who has caused you some suffering, she herself is also a victim of suffering. A set of circumstances—often beyond your understanding—have influenced her to perpetuate the hurt upon you.

When you adopt this enlightened state, you’re not condoning or justifying aggression, abuse, or violence. Instead, you’re responding with such kindness as to equip you with a substantial emotional breakthrough towards giving up resentment, harsh judgment, and revenge against the person who caused hurt.

Responding with the understanding that suffering stems from suffering can progressively offer you emotional freedom from the second-order suffering that comes from replaying that hurt repeatedly.

Idea for Impact: Forgiveness is for you—not for anyone else. Append your grievance story to remind youself of the heroic choice of realizing that forgiveness was hard—but you found a way to forgive anyway. Holding onto the anger and resentment will, then, no longer carry the same weight on you.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Blame Your Parents for Your Current Problems?
  2. Seven Ways to Let Go of Regret
  3. This May Be the Most Potent Cure for Melancholy
  4. Begin with Yourself
  5. How People Defend Themselves in a Crisis

Change Your Perspective, Change Your Reactions

By Leave a Comment

From the eighth-century Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryavatara (“Entrance to the Path of Awakening,”) a translation from Stephen Batchelor’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (1979:)

Where would I possibly find enough leather
With which to cover the surface of the earth?
But just leather on the soles of my shoes
Is equivalent to covering the earth with it
 
Likewise it is not possible for me
To restrain the external course of things
But should I restrain this mind of mine
What would be the need to restrain all else?

A powerful reminder that you can’t magically make the whole world and its people run smooth and easy, but you can reorient your heart and mind to change your perspective and endure the bumps that you’ll encounter.

Idea for Impact: If something isn’t to your liking, change your liking or find something else of your liking. The willingness to adjust is perhaps the single most critical human faculty.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue
  2. What the Buddha Taught About Restraining and Dealing with Anger
  3. Begin with Yourself
  4. Learn to Manage Your Negative Emotions and Yourself
  5. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be

Get Rid of Relationship Clutter

By Leave a Comment

Don’t hold on to relationships that aren’t supportive or beautiful—they’re robbing you of joy and nourishment. They’re exhausting your resources for the relationships that do matter.

Letting go of relationship clutter isn’t about tossing people out like tatty pairs of shoes. It’s about getting reflective if our relationships honor our soul self. Is there respect, love, and a sense of wanting the best for each other?

Find ways to distance yourself from relationships that drain your soul. Don’t burn bridges, though. Don’t hold onto every issue or argument. It’s more gracious—and better for you—just walk away, head held high, mouth shut. You’ll be glad you did it that way.

Idea for Impact: To get rid of clutter is to make room for more supportive and nurturing relationships.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Affection Is No Defense: Good Intentions Make Excellent Alibis
  2. The Secret to Happiness in Relationships is Lowering Your Expectations
  3. How to … Break the Complaint Habit
  4. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  5. Release Your Cows … Be Happy

How to Encourage Yourself During Tough Times

By Leave a Comment

My biggest takeaway from Daniel M. Cable’s Exceptional: Build Your Personal Highlight Reel and Unlock Your Potential (2020) is maintaining an inventory of reminders of all of the things you’re grateful for: the achievements, accomplishments, things you’re proud of, and events you want to celebrate—even others’ notes of gratitude.

When you’re entranced by ongoing anxieties and unable to find refuge in presence, the negative self-talk becomes your default setting. Unable to focus on what is happening right now, you spiral downward and find yourself in ruts that hold you back from your potential. Reigniting a certain sense of pride within yourself can jolt you into a more optimistic cycle and create real personal change. It can enable you to maintain a stable center no matter what’s going on in your life right now.

Research on the ‘Reflected Best-Self Exercise’ indicates that scanning the “highlight reel” of the best you’ve achieved in your life can help you, as it would a professional athlete, rediscover and reinforce how to repeat past successes. It can energize you to use your strengths even more and give more to others.

Idea for Impact: You make your most significant impact when focusing on what you do best. A personal highlight reel will remind you how others perceive you when you make your best impact and hope you build upon the unique strengths that make you exceptional.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Learn to Cope When You’re Stressed
  2. The Best Breathing Exercise for Anxiety
  3. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue
  4. The Law of Petty Irritations
  5. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal

Don’t Suppress Your Emotions

By Leave a Comment

The Buddha taught that emotions are part of being human. Redemption comes solely from knowledge, the root of which lies in the awareness of the reasons for suffering.

Buddhism discourages you from ignoring unpleasant emotions so that you don’t have to experience them.

Acknowledging the way things are—and that they can’t change—may be the most challenging step toward happiness. It’s worth trying because you really can be happy, even when your life looks nothing like you thought it would.

Don’t try to quash your emotions; let yourself feel them. Yes, even the unpleasant ones. This attitude enables you to process them and challenge the dread that you won’t handle them.

Idea for Impact: Acceptance helps you work with the life you have. You can feel contentment in life without berating yourself for not feeling what you think you’re supposed to feel.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to … Embrace the Transience of Emotions
  2. Feeling Is the Enemy of Thinking—Sometimes
  3. The Nature of Worry
  4. Seven Ways to Let Go of Regret
  5. Negative Emotions Aren’t the Problem—Our Flight from Them Is

Get Everything Out of Your Head

By Leave a Comment

When there’s so much going on in your head, you’re constantly playing mental ping-pong. All those unfinished tasks can indeed affect your ability to be present with anything that you’re doing.

Sitting down to write out all the things that are weighing on your mind can boot out the clutter. Per the Zeigarnik Effect, interrupted tasks and unfinished thoughts tend to inundate you with a constant stream of reminders. Just the simple act of capturing a task can achieve a sense of completion for the moment.

Clear off your cluttered desk, pour some tea, put on some relaxing music, light a candle, mute the phone, and write down all the things you need to pay attention to. Work stuff, home stuff, kids stuff, paperwork, school stuff, friends stuff—all the stuff! Get it all out of your head.

Writing down everything that’s occupying your mind right now won’t solve your problems, but it makes them evident. This exercise makes it a lot easier to make good intuitive choices about where you should focus now and where it’s okay that you don’t focus now.

Idea for Impact: Stop what you’re doing right now and write down everything you have in your head. Not only will this exercise put in perspective all those things you need to keep track of, but also it’s a great way to reset your day.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Cope with Anxiety and Stop Obsessive Worrying by Creating a Worry Box
  2. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal
  3. The Power of Negative Thinking
  4. This May Be the Most Potent Cure for Melancholy
  5. The Law of Petty Irritations

How to Stop a Worry Spiral

By Leave a Comment

If you tend to worry a lot—about your weight or money, what others think of you, going to a job you dislike, your life path,—you can use a simple trick proposed by the self-help author Shannon Kaiser.

In Joy Seeker (2019,) Kaiser suggests turning “what if” statements into “I wonder” statements. This reframing exercise helps quiet down your anxiety-filled thoughts and refocuses your mind on the best possible scenario rather than the worst:

Worry: What if I fail and it doesn’t work out?
Wonder: What if things go better than planned, and I am happier than I ever thought I could be?

Worry: What if people don’t understand or approve of what I do?
Wonder: What if people love it and my idea is well received?

Worry: What if I am rejected?
Wonder: What if I am accepted? My life will change for the better.

When you are too consumed with fear, your vision narrows, and your mind homes in on the threats you’re facing at the moment. You can’t focus on what you want. You can’t see the truth of the situation. Choosing wonder over worry helps you tap into the possibilities instead of getting sucked in by the limitations.

Idea for Impact: Approaching uncertainty with curiosity can help you fight hopelessness. Rather than admitting a terrible outcome as a foregone conclusion, you become open to possibility. You avoid sliding down into a pit of dread and despair. You’re far more likely to come up with effective ways for coping with the situation in question.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Power of Negative Thinking
  2. Cope with Anxiety and Stop Obsessive Worrying by Creating a Worry Box
  3. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal
  4. The Law of Petty Irritations
  5. Don’t Hide from Your Feelings, Accept Them

Mental Health Issues are Much More Common Than Acknowledged

By 1 Comment

Japanese tennis superstar Naomi Osaka generated enormous attention when she withdrew from the French Open earlier this month. Osaka was penalized $15,000 by the organizers and threatened with expulsion for refusing the mandatory media assignments required by the tournament’s rules. (Osaka has announced that she’ll skip the Wimbledon, too, for personal reasons.)

Osaka said she experiences “huge waves of anxiety” before speaking to the media and revealed that she has “suffered long bouts of depression.” She framed her decision as a mental health issue, declaring that answering questions after a loss can create self-doubt.

Osaka’s withdrawal has brought to the fore the fact that celebrities—just like regular people—struggle with mental wellness at work. No one is immune.

Osaka must be admired for talking about mental hardship openly. Her actions empower others with anxiety and depression to take care of mental health first.

It’s very human to be terrified of stuff that makes us very vulnerable. Not everybody is comfortable with public speaking, and few people feel they’re good at it. And, more to Osaka’s point, almost everyone hates talking publicly about what they did wrong after a defeat or a setback.

Idea for Impact: Bringing depression out of the shadows is a tough thing to do. Nobody has the right to invalidate or question how someone is trying to cope, especially when they’ve been strong enough to open up about it.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to… Reframe Negative Thoughts
  2. How to … Talk About Your Mental Health with Loved Ones
  3. How to … Silence Your Inner Critic with Gentle Self-Compassion
  4. How Thought-Stopping Can Help You Overcome Negative Thinking and Get Unstuck
  5. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal