Post: #1

As with many people, my mind is my biggest enemy. Negative self talk and letting my mind run off with ridiculousness is something I would like to stop.

Anyone use positive affirmations regularly to combat this? I've seen a couple people mention it, but I couldn't find a thread on it.

Any books or resources anyone can recommend on how to implement positive affirmations into your daily life? Is there a certain system that people use to stick with using them and make them work better?

I've been reading Think and Grow Rich and I know there is a section at the beginning about writing down your goals and reading them every morning and every night and it definitely seems to help my mindset.

What else is out there that I should read?

Thanks all.

Post: #2

I've done a fair few things to combat this.

Motivational videos - Some might view them as bullshit or a way to procrastinate but they can really hammer home some key things about life and get the ball moving.

Books - such as Think and Grow Rich, perhaps some NLP books as well will be beneficial.

In my opinion, it's not about eliminating the anxiety associated with tasks, but viewing it as a challenge to overcome.

Life is about being uncomfortable and progressing from there.

It really all does come down to mindset, which can take years to develop!

Post: #3

Great thread idea. Rio.

I'll share my personal experiences and thoughts on this topic.

But they're just one man's opinions, YMMV.


****

When I got heavy into game about 5 years ago, I experimented with various self-help technologies including visualization, affirmations, subliminal suggestion, auto-hypnosis, etc.

I got really into positive affirmations around 3 years ago. I did them religiously.

Yes, "religiously" --- that's the right word for it...


I got introduced to affirmations by this Dating/Lifestyle coach, Brent Smith.

I thought he was the most super-positive, happy dude I ever saw.

Now I'm not so sure...seems like he's selling naive guys happiness, health and success, in a bottle.

And all you have to is repeat mantras to yourself and keep telling yourself how happy, healthy and successful you are...and you WILL be.

Talk about a low overhead business!


Anyway, my conclusion about affirmations and positive thinking after practicing them fairly consistently for about 6 months straight was that they didn't do much for me in terms of actual progress in my business or sex life.

I still had negative, self-defeating, self-sabotaging thoughts all the time. I didn't get laid as much as I wanted. And I was still broke.

And trying to tell myself that I was, for instance, successful when I wasn't (yet), just created cognitive dissonance.

I was telling myself one thing, and reality was telling me another thing.

So on top of being ineffective, I also felt like I was duping myself.


Fast forward a few years.

After reading a lot of Osho's work and studying Eastern technologies, I have a different outlook on Positive Thinking, Negative Thinking, and thinking in general.

In the West, you're considered mentally ill if you deviate from the accepted norm of behavior and thought.

In the East, however, the mind itself is considered to be the source of problems.

In fact, the idea that you are in control of the contents of your mind is considered to be absurd in Eastern spiritual thought.


The Easterns have a different approach: meditation.

And all meditation really is, is watching your thought processes; just watching.

Not interfering, not manipulating, not influencing, not getting involved in any way. Only watching.

So meditation is a process of dis-identifying with the mind and witnessing what's happening like clouds passing in the sky.

Sometimes the clouds are dark and stormy, other times they're white and fluffy, and yet other times the sky is clear.

But you are not the sky, you are the watcher.


My experience with meditation is totally empirical.

I tried it, I practiced it, and it improved my life tremendously.

I have "negative" thoughts all the time. And I have "positive" ones, and everything in between.

But I feel like they don't matter in any consequential way because my mind is always chattering.

I've found that the better I get at watching my thoughts, the less they tend to affect my centering.


George Gurdjeff said "the only sin is identification [with the mind]".

And he meant that thoughts can't have be negative or positive; they simply are.

The problem is when people get so identified with what's going on in their heads that they think these thoughts mean something about them.

Ok, I've rambled on enough. I'll leave off with some of Osho's (more eloquent) ramblings!

Quote:The technique of positive thinking is not a technique that transforms you. It is simply repressing the negative aspects of your personality. It is a method of choice. It cannot help awareness; it goes against awareness. Awareness is always choiceless.

Positive thinking simply means forcing the negative into the unconscious and conditioning the conscious mind with positive thoughts. But the trouble is that the unconscious is far more powerful, nine times more powerful, than the conscious mind. So once a thing becomes unconscious, it becomes nine times more powerful than it was before. It may not show in the old fashion, but it will find new ways of expression.

So positive thinking is a very poor method, without any deep understanding, and it goes on giving you wrong ideas about yourself.

… Positive thinking came out of Christian Science. It talks now more philosophically, but the base remains the same – that if you think negatively, that is going to happen to you; if you think positively, that is going to happen to you. And in America that kind of literature is widely read. Nowhere else in the world has positive thinking made any impact – because it is childish.

“Think and grow rich” – everybody knows this is simply foolish. And it is harmful, and dangerous too.

The negative ideas of your mind have to be released, not repressed by positive ideas. You have to create a consciousness which is neither positive nor negative. That will be the pure consciousness.

In that pure consciousness you will live the most natural and blissful life.

If you repress some negative idea because it is hurting you…. For example: if you are angry, and you repress it and try to make an effort to change the energy into something positive – to feel loving towards the person you were feeling angry with, to feel compassionate – you know you are deceiving yourself.

Deep down it is still anger; it is just that you are whitewashing it. On the surface you may smile, but your smile will be limited only to your lips. It will be an exercise of the lips; it won’t be connected with you, with your heart, with your being. Between your smile and your heart, you yourself have put a great block – the negative feeling that you have repressed.

And it is not one feeling; in life you have thousands of negative feelings. You don’t like a person, you don’t like many things; you don’t like yourself, you don’t like the situation you are in. All this garbage goes on collecting in the unconscious, and on the surface a hypocrite is born, who says, “I love everybody, love is the key to blissfulness.” But you don’t see any bliss in that person’s life. He is holding the whole of hell within himself.

He can deceive others, and if he goes on deceiving long enough, he can deceive himself too. But it won’t be a change. It is simply wasting life – which is immensely valuable because you cannot get it back.

Positive thinking is simply the philosophy of hypocrisy – to give it the right name. When you are feeling like crying, it teaches you to sing. You can manage if you try, but those repressed tears will come out at some point, in some situation. There is a limitation to repression. And the song that you were singing was absolutely meaningless; you were not feeling it, it was not born out of your heart.

- OSHO

More from Osho on Positive Thinking:

http://www.oshonews.com/2011/09/positive-thinking-osho/

Post: #4

I did a lot of them as teenager. I think mentally they help a bit, but my issue was they were touted as being effective on their own and in my opinion they're not. If there isn't some type of action following the statements I consider them useless.

I think using them as a motivational tool to get you started in a certain direction is fine. The other thing I disliked which VincentVinturi alluded to is that you start thinking that having a negative thought is bad and you're messing up in some way by having one.

This article was also a good read:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/...e-thinking

So my take it's all about the actions.

Post: #5

(12-15-2013 05:38 AM)RioNomad Wrote:  Any books or resources anyone can recommend on how to implement positive affirmations into your daily life? Is there a certain system that people use to stick with using them and make them work better?

Actually there is a lot of research that positive affirmations do NOT work. Take a look at the work Oliver Burkeman has done :

Quote:A British journalist, Burkeman attends a "Get Motivated!" session in a Texas baseball stadium. In exchange for a pricey admission fee, he gets to hear President George W. Bush deliver a talk on the power of optimism. And he listens as Robert H. Schuller, the self-help guru and founder of the Crystal Cathedral, confidently reveals the secret of success.

"Here's the word that will change your life," Schuller tells his audience. After a dramatic pause he yells out, "Cut! … Cut the word 'impossible' from your life.... Cut it out forever!"

A few months later Schuller, the ringmaster of this failure-is-not-an-option lovefest, declares his Crystal Cathedral bankrupt.

This deliciously ironic opening is one of several amusing and instructive passages in "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking," which takes every self-help book you've ever read and turns it inside out.

More persuasive are the findings of the academics who have conducted scientific studies of the self-help movement, and Burkeman's own insights into the motivational stories that are suppose to teach us how to be successful. Using the example of the disasters that have befallen many who have tried to climb Mt. Everest — the ultimate type-A personality goal — Burkeman shows persuasively that "goal setting" as a path to success is a fallacy.

Countless books relate the triumphs of the adventurers and the corporate executives who set ambitious goals for themselves — and who take risks in the relentless pursuit of those goals. What those books don't tell us is that the leaders responsible for the world's most spectacular failures possess exactly the same qualities. It's a simple insight, but a powerful one.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/01/...n-20121202

(12-15-2013 05:38 AM)RioNomad Wrote:  As with many people, my mind is my biggest enemy. Negative self talk and letting my mind run off with ridiculousness is something I would like to stop.

I would definitely recommend meditation and, since you seem to be a physical kind of guy, yoga. If at all possible get out of the Bangkok madhouse for a week or two and hit a retreat centre just to get yourself started.

Taming the mind is a lifelong journey.

Post: #6

Every night before bed and every morning when I wake up I try to list everything I'm grateful for. I've noticed good things happening to me more and more.

I also try to change my inner voice and imagine a rich life of financial freedom and abundance.

Sometimes if I'm bummed out about doing something I don't want to do I change my frame towards it and find that once I get there or do the task it wasn't nearly as bad as I first thought. Frame is everything.

Life isn't a bitch people's mind state is.

Post: #7

Abraham-Hick and Bashar.

They have videos on youtube. Worth it.

Post: #8

The best self-help book I've ever read was Parallel Universes of Self by Frederick Dodson.

Post: #9

Yes positive thinking was also critisized by the founder of positive psychology which is more scientifically based.

I tried affirmations it didn´t work well. There are some merits one can switch some thought patterns but cognitive dissonance will probably fuck the brain in the long run.

Post: #10

I have a book thread here on REBT, the original CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy). It's not "positive thinking" per se, but it helps you to not exaggerate the bad things in your life, or to self-sabatoge yourself with your unrealistic negative thoughts.

/thread-28873.html

Quote:

Quote:A Guide To Rational Living is one of the most enduring books in the self-help/popular psychology literature, selling over a million copies. Since it was published over 40 years ago thousands of 'inspirational' titles have come and gone, but it continues to change people's lives. Why?

The book brought to public attention a new form of psychology, 'rational emotive behavioral therapy' (REBT), that went against decades of orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis and sparked a revolution in psychology.

REBT says that emotions do not arise as a result of repressed desires and needs, as Freud insisted, but directly from our thoughts, ideas, attitudes and beliefs. It is not the mysterious unconscious that matters most to our psychological health, but the most humdrum statements that we say to ourselves on a daily basis. Added up together, these represent our philosophy of life, one which can quite easily be altered if we are willing to change what we habitually say to ourselves.

Albert Ellis began his career working in the Freudian psychoanalytical tradition, but came to the conclusion that going deeper into a person's history and troubles did not actually have much positive benefit. His focus only on 'what worked' led him to the counterintuitive view that thoughts generate emotions, not the other way around. Reasoning your way out of emotional tangles seems doubtful, but Ellis's pioneering ideas, and four decades of cognitive psychology, have shown that it does indeed work.

Watching your internal sentences

Human beings, the authors note, are language-creating animals. We tend to formulate our emotions and our ideas in terms of words and sentences. They effectively become our thoughts and emotions. Therefore, if we are basically the things that we tell ourselves, any type of personal change requires us to first look at our internal conversations. Do they serve us, or undermine us?

Talk therapy aims to reveal the 'errors in logic' that people believe to be true. If, for instance, you are having terrible feelings of anxiety or fear, you are asked to track back to the original thought in the sequence of thoughts that led to your current anxiety. You will invariably find that you are saying things to yourself such as 'Wouldn't it be terrible if...' or 'Isn't it horrible that I am...' It is at this point that you have to intervene and ask yourself why exactly it would be so terrible if such and such happened, or whether your current situation is really as bad as you say. And ven if it is, will it last forever?

This sort of self-questioning at first seems naïve, but by doing it you begin to see just how much your internal sentences shape your life. After all, if you label some event a 'catastrophe', it surely will become so. You can only live up to your internal statements, whether they make something good, bad or neutral.

Nearly always a choice

Ellis and Harper challenge the reader to accept that it is not people or things themselves that cause us upset and anguish, but what we tell ourselves about those people or things. They cite the Roman philosopher Epictetus, who said: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.” Also quoted is the famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet: “There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

People think they are unhappy because of a marriage, or a job, or an illness – but it is always our perception of these things that matters most. The book notes that it is “virtually impossible to sustain an emotional outburst without bolstering it by repeated ideas”. Something will remain 'bad' in your mind only as long as you tell yourself it is. If you do not keep creating the bad feeling, how could it possibly endure? Granted, if you are experiencing physical pain, you cannot simply ignore the pain, but once it is over there is no automatic link between stimulus and feeling. Even with the death of a loved one, you cannot continue to experience depression over the death unless you keep reminding yourself 'How terrible it is that this person is now gone!'.

If you can't accept this, consider the pleasant feelings you have. After you have enjoyed a symphony or seen a play, you cannot keep feeling the positive emotions they sparked without going back in your mind to certain passages or scenes. Emotions need to be generated in order to be felt. Sustained emotion of any type requires thinking, and it is usually thinking of an evaluative type, that is, your judgment about a situation or person.

People make the mistake of thinking that emotion 'just happens' in response to something, but in fact this is rare. Some types of anger are a direct response to a situation which relate to our inbuilt survival mechanisms. These are biologically rooted reactions. Generally though, it is thoughts you generate that determine the quality of your emotional life.

Post: #11

(12-15-2013 05:38 AM)RioNomad Wrote:  As with many people, my mind is my biggest enemy. Negative self talk and letting my mind run off with ridiculousness is something I would like to stop.

Anyone use positive affirmations regularly to combat this? I've seen a couple people mention it, but I couldn't find a thread on it.

Any books or resources anyone can recommend on how to implement positive affirmations into your daily life? Is there a certain system that people use to stick with using them and make them work better?

I've been reading Think and Grow Rich and I know there is a section at the beginning about writing down your goals and reading them every morning and every night and it definitely seems to help my mindset.

What else is out there that I should read?

Thanks all.

Continue with Think and Grow Rich too as the book will have you doing a few of these things on a regular basis. By the time you get to the end, he'll have you repeating your goal twice a day (as you mentioned), repeating the self-confidence formula once a day, and there's an entire chapter you're supposed to read outloud once a day until it really sinks in too.

That book really is meant to be an ongoing process for training your mind. I was getting pretty into it after a couple rereads recently and it was charging me up. Have been slipping the past couple weeks on that though so need to get back on the ball.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #12

(12-15-2013 06:32 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  

Quote:“Think and grow rich” – everybody knows this is simply foolish. And it is harmful, and dangerous too.

'

Great post as usual, Vincent. I find the ideas you mentioned, especially the observations in the portion of your post you wrote, well worth thinking about at length. Some of this has crossed my own mind lately and I experiment with some meditation myself. I'd like to look into some Eastern philosophies a bit more.

But that said, and forgive me for going off on a bit of a tangent here (none of this is directed at you)...

Part of this Osho quote really irks a pet peeve of mine and I felt a need to call it out. This is something I see so many popular experts doing with arguments they don't agree with. Instead of taking a book on its own terms and disagreeing with what it actually says, they disagree with the simplified stereotype of the idea and expect that to pass muster.

You see this so often with books that go against the grain.

"The four hour work week is dumb because you can't work four hours a week and get rich."

"Think and Grow Rich is foolish because you can't just think positive and expect that to make you rich."

This is the type of shit people throw out there when slamming these books, but it's far too simplistic because neither of these books make these assertions and in fact both make it a point to make that clear within. Essentially, the naysayers are disagreeing with some trumped up kid's version of the actual content, and I honestly think it's insulting to both the intelligence of the authors and the readers of these books.

Because people would hardly rant and rave about these books if that's what they really said - most people who rant about them are actually pretty intelligent, accomplished people.

One thing I always keep in mind when examining ideas I don't agree with is that if there's a seemingly easy argument to an important idea, something that jumps right to mind instinctually when I first come across it, chances are that countless people have raised it already and in fact the point has likely been addressed directly as the idea was presented in the first place.

So if I really fancy myself one of the select few who was able to see right through it on first look, it's probably just that I'm giving myself too much credit and the idea too little.

That's why when someone just throws something out there loosely like Osho does here - i.e. "everyone knows it's foolish to presume you can just think and get rich" - it tells me they either never actually evaluated the idea they're trying to shame (maybe just heard the title) or are just too lazy to attack the idea with reason on its own merits. Or they simply knew they could get away with playing on the ignorance of the masses...

And when I see someone commit that type of logical foul I find it really hard to take them seriously or trust them to keep intellectual integrity in mind when presenting their own ideas. I also find it ironic when he describes Napoleon Hill's ideas as dangerous when his own style of shooting it down is so intellectually dangerous itself.

Think and Grow Rich is about WAY more than positive thinking, and I urge everyone to give it a read and decide for themselves what it is he's really getting at. Just wanted to throw that out there before anyone jumped to the conclusion that the excerpt quoted is actually making some kind of case against it.

EDIT: As a side note, I don't know anything about Osho and am not even opposing what he says here or anywhere based on this fallacy he's committed. Chances are he's probably just going by what others told him about the book. I will probably look into his writing further.

I just take issue with him so casually hating on a book he clearly isn't giving fair treatment too.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #13

I'm naturally a very critical person. It's just how I'm wired. It's a nonstop voice in my head of analysis and judgement. I'm grateful for it because I learn new concepts quickly, but the side effects are the constantly judging other people and my natural introvert tendencies coming out. The side effects can be quite damaging.

I've never done any positive affirmations per se, but I guess you could call them mantras. I've done breathing mantras, very simple ones, just a voice in my head saying, "Breath in, breath out." Over and over. Just boring, calming, commentary that pushes out the constant judging. When you're breathing, don't focus on inhaling. Focus on exhaling as much breath as you can, and letting your body naturally take in just as much air as it needs. You can do meditations where you visualize your exhaling as ridding your body of negative thoughts and hateful energy.

A thought that I've been walking around with lately is, "We're all primates" or "We're all animals". I think about the physical activity of our solar system. I know that sounds outlandish but bear with me here. Think about that documentary where they interviewed the astronauts that have seen Earth from space. Think about that and how much that would affect you and your daily decisions and thoughts; we're on a spaceship floating through space around a giant fireball, and we're just a bunch of monkeys that happened to sprout up out of the Earth. All of our constructs and judgements are intangible fabrications of our mind; they're not real or significant in the grand scheme of things. This perspective can release anxiety and put less weight on our daily life; keep your perspective whimsical and cosmic in scope. One day we'll all be space dust.

When you think about the natural universe as it is, you start to see the insignificance and grossly inflated importance of man's own ego.

Post: #14

Hang out with me for a week and you'll never have this issue again.

High energy, high on life, zero fucks are given day after day after day.

Post: #15

I agree on using meditation. I notice I'm a lot more calm through the day when I take the time to do it.

As far as affirmations, I think they can work if enough force is put behind it. I like Tony Robbins explanation on affirmations or what he calls "incantations". Parts of it are a little cheesy but I like his advice on putting yourself in a state of certainty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcXYB-4kOl4

Post: #16

"Botulism in your salad is the path to enlightment" - Osho.

Post: #17

OP I recommend going through Brent Smith's youtube videos...especially on "creating your story, etc." It's funny, I actually found his stuff after reading T&GR 3 times in a week. Something started to click and I wanted to dig deeper into it. After ccommitting fully to the "story creation" concept and constantly re-framing any negative thoughts for a week I've experienced massive growth. Anyway, I'd dig into Brent Smith's stuff. If anyone wants more info or specifics I'll post a little more in-depth

Post: #18

(12-15-2013 03:37 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  Great post as usual, Vincent.

Thanks bro! :-)

Quote:I find the ideas you mentioned, especially the observations in the portion of your post you wrote, well worth thinking about at length. Some of this has crossed my own mind lately and I experiment with some meditation myself. I'd like to look into some Eastern philosophies a bit more.

But that said, and forgive me for going off on a bit of a tangent here (none of this is directed at you)...

Part of this Osho quote really irks a pet peeve of mine and I felt a need to call it out. This is something I see so many popular experts doing with arguments they don't agree with. Instead of taking a book on its own terms and disagreeing with what it actually says, they disagree with the simplified stereotype of the idea and expect that to pass muster.

You see this so often with books that go against the grain.

"The four hour work week is dumb because you can't work four hours a week and get rich."

"Think and Grow Rich is foolish because you can't just think positive and expect that to make you rich."

This is the type of shit people throw out there when slamming these books, but it's far too simplistic because neither of these books make these assertions and in fact both make it a point to make that clear within. Essentially, the naysayers are disagreeing with some trumped up kid's version of the actual content, and I honestly think it's insulting to both the intelligence of the authors and the readers of these books.

Because people would hardly rant and rave about these books if that's what they really said - most people who rant about them are actually pretty intelligent, accomplished people.

One thing I always keep in mind when examining ideas I don't agree with is that if there's a seemingly easy argument to an important idea, something that jumps right to mind instinctually when I first come across it, chances are that countless people have raised it already and in fact the point has likely been addressed directly as the idea was presented in the first place.

So if I really fancy myself one of the select few who was able to see right through it on first look, it's probably just that I'm giving myself too much credit and the idea too little.

That's why when someone just throws something out there loosely like Osho does here - i.e. "everyone knows it's foolish to presume you can just think and get rich" - it tells me they either never actually evaluated the idea they're trying to shame (maybe just heard the title) or are just too lazy to attack the idea with reason on its own merits. Or they simply knew they could get away with playing on the ignorance of the masses...

And when I see someone commit that type of logical foul I find it really hard to take them seriously or trust them to keep intellectual integrity in mind when presenting their own ideas. I also find it ironic when he describes Napoleon Hill's ideas as dangerous when his own style of shooting it down is so intellectually dangerous itself.

Think and Grow Rich is about WAY more than positive thinking, and I urge everyone to give it a read and decide for themselves what it is he's really getting at. Just wanted to throw that out there before anyone jumped to the conclusion that the excerpt quoted is actually making some kind of case against it.

EDIT: As a side note, I don't know anything about Osho and am not even opposing what he says here or anywhere based on this fallacy he's committed. Chances are he's probably just going by what others told him about the book. I will probably look into his writing further.

I just take issue with him so casually hating on a book he clearly isn't giving fair treatment too.

I hear exactly what you're saying BB, and I completely agree.

I think you're trying to say (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that you should take things as they are and give them the merit they deserve rather than discrediting them on the basis of a generalization.

e.g. - The 4 Hour Work Week is possible, but you need to work your ass off first in order to get to that point. Doesn't mean it's bullshit or that the concepts in the book like geoarbitrage, outsourcing, 80/20 are somehow illegitimate!

Even though the Easterns believe that you aren't in control of the contents of your mind, I definitely feel that surrounding yourself with the kinds of influences you want (i.e. the people in your life, where you live, your hobbies, the books you read) has a big positive impact on life.

In fact, all the more so, since if you aren't in control of the contents of your mind, you should tightly control what you allow into it and who you allow to influence it.

The Osho quote is a bit polar, I agree. I think the main thing is to find what works for you individually and discard what doesn't, Bruce Lee style. As long as it gets the practical result you're looking for, I don't care how you skin your cats.

Post: #19

Every person and every situation in every time is different.

As some said, people set up a straw man argument to make their own counter-position seem more well-defined and necessary. The guy who wrote the four hour work week got more attention than if he wrote the thirty-two hour work week.

I think there is in fact evidence for cognitive rehearsal, visualization of you doing what you want to do. It's pretty hard to separate self-statements about what you should/want to do from visualizing that state of affairs.

I'm actually a fan of self-statements because to me a lot of time my mind seems like a child, it will wander off where it shouldnt' go. If I need a guidance type statement, who better to make it but me.

After years of delay, I finally found a supervisor who would sign off on my work so I could get a license in my profession. He was a short balding guy with a birth defect. All the women that worked in the place loved me and were wary of his irritable presence. He hated me.

I had to sit with him an hour a week and listen to him insult me.

I used to tell myself before going "I will easily and enjoyably succeed here." I think it helped, honestly.

I have my license now.

I think it bears saying that these types of things don't work in every situtation. When all you've got is a large hammer, everything looks like a big nail.

REBT is great, but therapy schools can be like religious sects, they claim their way is the only way.
Sometimes I'm so angry and miserable that I can't even get myself to say something pacifying to myself. It can be like asking someone with a 104 fever and pneumonia to work out more so he doesn't get sick next time. You have to be at a stage where you can benefit from a certain activity.

Even if that "work out more" statement is what that person needs to hear, it might not be for a week or a year.

Post: #20

VincentVinturi did this lifestyle coach any value to your life, what was the cost?

Post: #21

(12-15-2013 04:25 PM)WestCoast Wrote:  Hang out with me for a week and you'll never have this issue again.

High energy, high on life, zero fucks are given day after day after day.

I may be in the city a few months after the new year. Ill definitely hit you up if I do. I've only been to SF for one night. Stayed with my buddy on Broadway, then went to some small corner Irish dive bar, hid a bottle of vodka behind the dumpster in the alley, and had a blast. I'm sure I missed out on a lot though lol.


Thanks for all the info guys. Got a lot to read through here.

Post: #22

(12-16-2013 07:20 AM)kali Wrote:  VincentVinturi did this lifestyle coach any value to your life, what was the cost?

I didn't do any sessions with him personally. Just watched a bunch of his youtube vids.

Post: #23

I used to monitor my "self-talk" but not anymore. Now, I don't care if my self talk is positive or negative. I know its not real anyways. I am aware of my self talk and I observe it happening but I know its just a product of my imagination. I mostly ignore it. It wouldn't matter anyways because most of it is very positive. I have been practicing thought control for a long time.

Now, I only worry about positive action.

Most of my thoughts are irrelevant. I am not affected by negative thinking. I know it is not real.

Post: #24

So there was a time before where it was necessary, yes? I think after positive thought patterns become established as an automatic routine one can get to level you're describing. I'd be interested in more how you got to where you are now and how long you thought it took. Thanks Gio!

Post: #25

(12-19-2013 01:46 PM)Shamrock Wrote:  So there was a time before where it was necessary, yes?

Yes.

(12-19-2013 01:46 PM)Shamrock Wrote:  I think after positive thought patterns become established as an automatic routine one can get to level you're describing.

I Agree,

But, not everyone works the same way. Some people might be better off establishing a positive action pattern BEFORE working on a positive thought pattern.

Or, some people might want to work on BOTH at the same time. (I would probably recommend that)

However, some people with really negative thought patterns would definitely need to fix their thoughts before anything else.

I would start with one simple adjustment to my thoughts and one simple adjustment to my behavior.

(12-19-2013 01:46 PM)Shamrock Wrote:  I'd be interested in more how you got to where you are now and how long you thought it took. Thanks Gio!

It took me years. At least 5 years of working off and on..

I studied psychology, meditation, thought control, the brain, "the ego", etc. I studied the thought patterns of successful people.

I basically eliminated as many negative influences as I could and replaced them with positive influences.

I learned to "re-frame" my thoughts. I learned that my thoughts were not me, but rather a reflection of my environment. So, I changed my environment.

Don't live in the past. Your thoughts of the past are an imaginary reality created in your mind.

Live in the RIGHT NOW!