Recently I’ve been trying to work on improving my outlook on life and general mood. Given how much our mood can affect our stress levels and therefore our health, I thought I’d go over one of the strategies I’ve been trying:
Right vs Wrong, and Helpful vs Unhelpful
For most of my life I’ve focused on whether a thought is correct or incorrect. In the last few weeks, I’ve added a new category: helpful or unhelpful. While this is not a particularly groundbreaking change, the difference is that I’m being a lot more intentional about it, to the point that I will ask myself multiple times a day, “OK, forget accurate or inaccurate. Is. This. Helpful?”
For example, ‘it’s not fair that I’m sick’ is true, but it’s not a particularly helpful thought, so that one gets to float off into the void without me pursuing it further.
To be clear, I don’t think ‘it’s not fair’ is always an unhelpful thought; on the contrary, that’s the beginning of any number of social reforms and boundary settings. Even ‘it’s not fair that I’m ill’ could be a helpful thought – if you’ve been blaming yourself or exhausting yourself trying to find a reason for your illness, a simple ‘things happen and it’s not fair’ might be an extremely helpful thought indeed. But for me, right now, it’s not. Whether a thought is helpful or unhelpful will depend entirely on you and your specific situation.
Sometimes thoughts can be wrong and unhelpful. Worrying that I’m a burden is not true because people aren’t burdens, but sometimes it can be hard to convince myself of that. However, I can convince myself that it is not helpful, as all it will do is make me stressed and sicker, which is no help to me or anyone else, and so I can also let that thought float off into the void.
Of course, it’s not always that easy. Particularly when I read something upsetting in the news and start stewing about it, it can take multiple ‘unhelpfuls’ before I move on, but overall, it’s working better than I expected.
I’m not saying that I never feel frustrated, or that I’ll never vent about my life. That’s neither realistic nor particularly healthy. But by allowing myself to pay more attention to thoughts that are both true and helpful, I’m spending less time in endless loops of frustration and worry and more time on thoughts that are going to benefit me.
What thought tricks have helped you?
