Last update: 10 November 2015
No one, not even your worst enemy, can harm you as much as an undisciplined mind.
(Buddha)
It is impossible to know the exact number of our thoughts, but we are said to formulate up to 70.000 thoughts a day and New Scientist magazine claims that, on average, we have 10 raised to 80.000.000.000.000 thoughts throughout life. This is a figure that exceeds the number of atoms present in the universe, if we consider the quantity of neurons and all the connections that unite them.
Among this huge figure, we learn to select the ones that correspond most to the worldview we adopt during our life. Those thoughts that give rise to a concrete emotion in us and that lead us to act in a certain way.
Our thoughts generate emotions
If we think we will get a good result, we will experience positive emotions that will motivate us to take action to achieve that goal.
If instead we imagine a catastrophic ending, we will feel sad and incapable and this will demotivate us from taking the necessary actions or make us opt for the less suitable alternatives to deal with the situation.
Our mind is able to imagine, dream, create, invent, communicate, discover and change reality. However, it is this same ability that plays tricks on us.
We are interpreters of emotions
This is an incredible ability of the human being. Emotions must be listened to, welcomed and managed in order to learn from ourselves and, in this way, be empathetic with others. However, It is necessary to remember that we cannot always rely on emotional reasoning to make reliable judgments.
Past experiences have their weight
We humans make connections based on how events in the past have made us feel. Unfortunately, however, if an experience was negative, we run the risk of projecting it into the future as an equivocal clue that it will happen again, because now we feel exactly the same as we did in the past.
We learn and make mistakes along the way
If something goes wrong, it's not just up to us. You have to take into consideration the fact that life is made up of several variables that condition events. If we forget it, we will always feel guilty or blame others.
To build an open attitude towards learning, learning from mistakes or letting others know that something is wrong is crucial, but we can't blame ourselves too much for that.
Sometimes, thinking about it does NOT say anything about you. It's all a mental game.
To understand this, let's learn to distinguish two concepts with a story:
Marta will meet up with a friend with whom she had an affair for a couple of years. Many doubts can arise and many possible situations that will happen during the meeting can be imagined. After all this time, Marta holds no grudge or anger towards her. She fell in love again and everything else is now a thing of the past.
It is normal to feel emotions and be nervous imagining what it will be like to talk to him again. However, it is precisely this imagination that, at times, makes us recreate a plot that triggers an emotion that makes us go to the appointment with a negative or positive energy and that, moreover, makes us feel good or bad about ourselves. .
Egosyntonico: behaviors, values ​​and feelings that are in harmony with ourselves, are accepted by our ego and are consistent with our ideals and the image we have of us.
"This, which I have just thought about, I would like to do and it is in tune with myself"
I imagined that we would meet in that place after all these years without seeing each other and that it gave us so much pleasure to talk for hours.
Egodistonico: behaviors, values ​​and feelings that are in conflict and not in tune with the needs, goals of our ego and the image we have of ourselves.
I figured I was hurting you by telling you things that hurt you and was unable to stop. I am a bad person.
"This, which I just thought, I would NOT like to do it and it is not in tune with myself"
Let's conclude ...
1. Knowing that our mind is able to imagine, create and dream the best, but also the worst.
2. Keeping in mind that emotions are fundamental, but not always ideal for confirming our thoughts.
3. Making a distinction between egosyntonic and egodistonic, we know that thinking it does NOT mean that it will happen or that we are bad people because we have negative thoughts, because then we can filter the image we have of us, morals, reflection and values.
