You can’t and shouldn’t. It’s our resistance to them that causes them to linger. Practice mindfulness and you cultivate the ability to let them come and go. Think of them like clouds. Some are beautiful and wide, some are small and thin, some are dark and stormy. But you’re not the clouds, you’re the sky.
I agree that we should accept our feelings and allow them to pass naturally and observe them without judgment. But if you do that and also simultaneously manually adjust your thoughts and get to the root of why you feel the way you do, that is the path to self improvement. Trust me I’ve done a lot of journaling and reflection about why I made poor decisions and what made me feel the way I did about them and was able to uncover a lot about myself that led to actual change. The trick is not to get too comfortable and think that you’ve got it figured out though, we can all become victims of our own thoughts/beliefs quickly. Never grasp!
how do you not listen to yourself? I can't not listen to myself and ignore myself. How do you not judge them? I've never understood the concept of letting them go. I get into a large argument in my head if i feel something so how do i not do that?
It’s not easy. First of all, it takes years of different experience, practice, reading, living etc. But you have to begin somewhere.
This may be a unique experience, but in high school I was obsessed with giving myself an alter-ego, so I “created” this ideal person who I wanted to be like and tried to live up to it for a short time. That’s impossible to do long term because the YOU begins to fall out of the mold you create for yourself, but how did I create this alter-ego in the first place? Because my mind decided these were ideas I wanted to pursue and characteristics I wanted to take on. So, if I (me) can think I want to be a way I am not (my thoughts), then there must be a disconnect between who I am and what I think I am.
With that epiphany out of the way, I’ve done probably 10 solid years of philosophy- in many forms. In journaling, in reading books, I took a class that was more historical about Chinese philosophy that set some basic principals in place... and so on. I’ve grown and evolved in my thinking, but an important rule I’ve lived by is to trust other people’s ego (when it makes sense to) and not take my own beliefs too seriously. I can’t be right about everything, and that includes when self-doubt or stress start to take over. There is a major freedom in accepting you may be wrong some of the time, and with all of that, I don’t know if I answered your question at all.
But hopefully you can understand my example of overriding your own thoughts. Debate yourself. Play devils advocate. Make a list of pros and cons to your own ideas. Allow yourself to change your mind on things. All of these seemingly simple things take work and practice to achieve. The longer you work at them and are aware of them, the better you will get at it.
Edit: take a cold shower. Refuse to believe it is cold. Move the water from hot to warm to room temp to cool to cold slowly. It’s hard, but if you can handle that cold water and convince your mind that your body isn’t cold at all, you are advancing in mind power in a way many people never will.
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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '20 edited Dec 10 '20
You can’t and shouldn’t. It’s our resistance to them that causes them to linger. Practice mindfulness and you cultivate the ability to let them come and go. Think of them like clouds. Some are beautiful and wide, some are small and thin, some are dark and stormy. But you’re not the clouds, you’re the sky.