Richard Carlson - Stop Thinking, Start Living

Now hold on a moment. A few seconds ago you were fine and you weren’t even thinking about the problem. Now, with my help, you are describing a painful event as if it were really happening! But it’s not happening – except in your mind. I’m the first person to admit that it is important to acknowledge a real problem. But acknowledgement and commitment to solving a problem takes a moment or two, at most. Acknowledgement is very different from dwelling on and rehearsing, or doing endless post-mortems on situations or events.

Remember, the way you feel is determined by your thoughts. So guess what: the more attention you put on anything that is negative, the worse you will feel. Again, I ask that you use your own wisdom and common sense to decide whether or not to believe me. Despite the popular idea that talking about and working through negative emotions is a good idea, I’m suggesting that common sense dictates otherwise. After all, people have been working through endless negative emotions for years now – and very few are much better off than when they started and many are worse off. The questions to ask yourself (and your therapist if you have one) are: when does it (the analysis) stop? When have I had enough? When do I get to feel better?

If you believe that your thoughts are real – and you are encouraged to work through the worst of them – you will end up with even more to contend with. The more you think, the bigger and more important the thoughts will seem and the more of them there will be to deal with. Because your feelings are determined by what you think, you will, by necessity, sink even lower. And, unfortunately, because you are lower, you will think even worse thoughts, which you now have to ‘work through’. This endless negative spiral never takes you upwards towards the place you want to be. The spiral will end when you decide that ‘enough is enough’, when you ‘start over’ with a clean slate, with a clear mind, and when you realize that the only thing holding your depression in place is your own thinking. You must stop focusing on your depression.

Humility

As you learn this approach, and as you begin to pull out of depression, try to be easy on yourself. It takes a great deal of humility to admit that your own thinking is the cause of your suffering. Everything you have learned prior to now may have suggested otherwise. Before you realize that your thinking is causing your depression, it’s easy to blame other people and the circumstances of your life for your misery. The reason for this is clear. When you feel bad, you will have the tendency to come up with a theory as to why you feel the way you do. Without knowing the actual cause, it makes sense to create a reason. As long as you can create reasons for your depression – your marital status, your job, your children, your genes, your financial situation, your future, and so forth – you can maintain the false hope that things will get better when … But you can probably see that, in actuality, this is not true. The mindset that says, ‘Life will be better when …’ will create further conditions that must be met as soon as the initial conditions are satisfied. You need only to look at the countless times in your life that you received what you wanted – and happiness still eluded you – to realize that changing your circumstances isn’t the answer to your problems. If it were, you’d already be happy! You wanted to graduate, you graduated. You wanted a mate, you got one. You wanted a pet, you got one. You wanted a pay-cheque, you got one. And so on. Tens of thousands of times in your life you got exactly what you wanted and yet you’re still unhappy!

The solution is to have the humility to admit that all along you have been creating your own pain through your own thinking. Don’t worry; almost everyone else is doing the same thing. The good news is that as soon as you see that this is true, you’ll be on your way to a far better life. No matter how depressed you have been, or how long you have been depressed, the moment you can see that it’s only your thinking that is holding your depression in place, you’re on your way to freedom.

You Cannot Think Your Way out of Depression

In many respects, if you want to escape from depression, it’s just as important to know what not to do as it is to know what to do. If you have followed what you have read thus far you will have no difficulty understanding the statement You cannot think your way out of depression . You could think and think for a hundred years and you would never escape from the grips of depression. The reason: when your spirits are low you will generate negative thoughts. All you will see is negativity. You already know that your thoughts determine how you feel; thus, when you think in a depressed state of mind you will only make matters worse. The famous American football coach, Vince Lombardi, once said, ‘Just because you‘re doing something wrong, doing it more intensely isn’t going to help.’ No idea applies better when you are depressed. It’s your thinking that lowered your spirits to begin with; doing more of the same will only make matters worse.

Fuelling the Fire

When you are depressed, the single worst thing you can do to yourself is to continue thinking – especially if you are attempting to use your thinking to pull yourself out of your depression. To do so is only ‘fuelling the fire’. Perhaps you believe, as many people do, that you can’t stop thinking when you’re down in the dumps. And although it can be difficult to ‘stop thinking’, there is an enormous difference between doing something while believing it’s natural and necessary – and doing that very same thing knowing that it is the cause of your suffering. Once you realize that what you have been doing has been hurting you, you will find a way to stop doing it! The only reason you have tried to think your way out of depression in the past is because you knew of no other options. But you wouldn’t put salt in your wound once you knew it was going to sting like crazy. Thinking while you are depressed is similar to pouring a bucketful of salt over a deep cut! As you begin to understand the dynamic between your thinking and the way you feel, you will be able to ease off your thinking, in much the same way that you can ease off your car’s accelerator when you are stuck in the mud. Before you understand that trying harder to get out of the mud doesn’t work, you are tempted to put your foot down onto the floor. After you understand the relationship between the weight of your foot and sinking deeper into the mud, however, you ease off a little bit. If you’ve ever been stuck in the mud in your car, you know how tempting it is to try to force your way out, even when you know that accelerating makes matters worse; but because you do know better, you are able to resist the urge. Resist the urge to think your way out of your depression and you will find yourself out of it quicker than you expected.

Three / Healthy Psychological Functioning

At the core or centre of your being is something you were born with, your ‘healthy psychological functioning’. Healthy functioning is not learned, it’s inherent, it’s your birthright, and it’s always present when you are not engaged in your thinking mind or your ‘personality’. Your healthy functioning is innate, it’s your most natural state of mind. It’s not who you think you are (your ego), it’s your higher self, who you really are and who you can be. Your healthy functioning is where your wisdom lies, it is your peace of mind, your common sense, your satisfaction in life, and your feeling of wholeness.

I will refer to your healthy functioning in different ways, with words like wisdom and common sense . It doesn’t matter what you call it, the words are interchangeable. Your healthy functioning is the part of you that sees beyond unhappiness; it’s your source of emotional buoyancy, the part of you where true and lasting happiness exists, and the part of you that isn’t disturbed when the circumstances in your life are less than perfect.