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Control your thoughts

May 12, 2020 by Paddy Spruce

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I suspect we have as much chance of controlling our thoughts as we have of controlling our dreams. I think dreams are really thoughts. Shakespeare said that we make things good or bad by our thinking. So it’s not what happens to us that causes positive or negative feelings. It’s what we think about what happens to us that causes the reaction or response. Some people see the virus as an opportunity to learn new skills and others see it as a disaster. The virus just is. An alternative to interpreting thoughts is to just treat them as mere thoughts. Something happens to you. You have a thought about it. You simply let the thought keep passing through your mind without engaging it. What you see as negative feedback is just someone else’s opinion and probably different from yours. Let it pass without rumination. Step back and observe the thought instead of engaging and likely upsetting yourself. If you have an old recurring thought that bothers you, next time it visits, ask it to wait in the waiting room and get on with what you are doing. It will get bored and go away. You can create your own misery if you really want to. Or….

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Paddy is located in Melbourne, Australia and welcomes requests from beyond.

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