You Can Be Happy No Matter What. Richard Carlson

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СКАЧАТЬ very depressed today.”

      Richard: “Did you recognize that you were having depressing thoughts?”

      Client: “I didn’t have negative or depressing thoughts; I just feel depressed.”

      It took some time before I recognized the problem in our communication. We have all been taught that “thinking” means sitting down to “ponder,” to put in time and effort, as if we were doing a math problem. According to this idea of thinking, a person who wouldn’t dream of spending six hours obsessing about a single angry thought could nevertheless feel quite “normal” thinking fifteen or twenty angry thoughts for thirty seconds at a time.

      “Thinking about something” can occur over several days or within a passing second. We tend to dismiss the latter as unimportant, if we recognize it at all. But this is not so. Feelings follow and respond to a thought regardless of how much time the thought takes. For example, if you think, even in passing, “My brother got more attention than I did — I never did like him,” the fact that you now feel resentful toward your brother is not merely a coincidence. If you have the thought, “My boss doesn’t appreciate me — I never get the recognition I deserve,” the fact that you now feel bad about your job came about as soon as that thought came to mind. It all takes place in an instant. The time it takes to feel the effects of your thinking is the same amount of time it takes to see the light after turning on the switch.

      The ill effects of thought come about when we forget that “thought” is a function of our consciousness — an ability that we as human beings have. We are the producers of our own thinking. Thought is not something that happens to us, but something that we do. It comes from inside of us, not from the outside. What we think determines what we see — even though it often seems the other way around.

      Consider a professional athlete who “lets his team down” by making a critical error in the last championship game before his retirement. For years after retiring from the sport, he dwells on his error for a moment here and a moment there. When people ask, “Why are you depressed so much of the time?” he responds by saying, “What a fool I was to make such a mistake. How else do you expect me to feel?” This person doesn’t see himself as the thinker of his own thoughts, nor does he see his thinking as the cause of his suffering. If you suggested to him that it was his thinking that was depressing him, he would, in all honesty, say, “No it isn’t. The reason I’m depressed is that I made the mistake, not that I’m thinking about it. In fact, I seldom think about it anymore. I’m simply upset at the facts.”

      We could substitute any example for our ex-athlete’s error: A past relationship, a current one “on the rocks,” a financial blunder, harsh words we said to hurt someone, criticism leveled at ourselves, the fact that our parents were less than perfect, that we chose the wrong career or mate, or whatever — it is all the same. It’s our thinking, not our circumstances, that determines how we feel. We forget, moment to moment, that we are in charge of our thinking, that we are the ones doing the thinking, so it often appears as though our circumstances are dictating our feelings and experience of life. Consequently, it seems to make sense to blame our unhappiness on our circumstances, which makes us feel powerless over our lives.

      We Are The Thinkers Of Our Own Thoughts

      Unlike other functions or abilities that we have as human beings, it’s hard to remember that we are the thinkers of our own thoughts. It’s easy to remember that our voices are the product of our ability to speak. It would be virtually impossible to startle ourselves with our own function of speech because we are so aware that we are the ones creating the noise. We could scream and yell and rant and rage, but we still wouldn’t be frightened by the sound of our own voice.

      The same could be said about our ability to ingest and digest food. You wouldn’t eat something and then wonder why you had a certain taste in your mouth — you are always aware that you are the one who put the food in your mouth.

      But thinking is different. William James, the father of American psychology, once said, “Thinking is the grand originator of our experience.” Every experience and perception in life is based on thought. Because thinking precedes everything and goes on so automatically, it’s more basic and “closer to home” than any other function we have. We have innocently learned to interpret our thoughts as if they were “reality,” but thought is merely an ability that we have — we are the ones who produce those thoughts. It’s easy to believe that because we think something, the object of our thinking (the content) represents reality. When we realize that thinking is an ability rather than a reality, we can dismiss any negative thoughts that pass through. As we do so, a positive feeling of happiness begins to emerge. If we harbor negative thoughts (pay too much attention to or dwell on them), we will lose the positive feeling and feel the effects of the negativity.

      Here is a typical example of how thought can be misunderstood and how this lack of understanding affects us — the “thinker.” Let us pretend that you accidentally spill a glass of water on the floor of a restaurant and look up to see that a man, two tables over, has flashed what you believe to be a disapproving look. You respond with anger. “What’s the matter with that guy,” you think. “Hasn’t he ever dropped anything? What a jerk!” Your thoughts about the circumstance make you frustrated, and end up ruining your afternoon. Every few minutes you remember the incident, and as you think about it, you become angry. But the truth of the matter is, that person didn’t even see you drop the water. He was in his own world, reacting to his own thoughts about an error he had made at work earlier that day. He couldn’t have cared less about you. In fact, he didn’t even know that you existed.

      Unfortunately, all of us have experienced this kind of situation many times. We forget that we are only thinking. We fill our heads with false information, which we then interpret as “reality” instead of “thought.” If only we could remember that we are the thinker. If we really could understand that as we think about something, we feel the effects of our thoughts, during this episode at the restaurant, we might have been able to recognize that it was our own thoughts, not another person, upsetting us.

      To understand the principle of thought and how it applies throughout the human experience is a valuable gift. We need not constantly be in conflict with our environment and with those around us. We can maintain a positive feeling of happiness, because we no longer feel compelled to seriously follow every train of thought that comes into our heads. You may have no control whatsoever over what another person does, but you can be immune to the adverse effects of your thinking about him, once you understand that you think “thoughts,” not “reality.” Your thoughts, not your circumstances, determine how you feel. An absence of negative thought brings forth a positive feeling.

      If you don’t understand this principle, it may seem as though thinking is determined by what the outside world is doing. But it’s actually the other way around. Our thinking shapes our experience of life. The way we think about something and, most important, the way we relate to our thinking, will determine its effect on us. The outside circumstance itself is neutral. Only thought brings meaning to a circumstance. This is why the same circumstance can, and will, mean entirely different things to different people. In our restaurant example, had you dismissed your negative thoughts, the incident wouldn’t have mattered to you. In a healthy relationship to your thinking, you would have your thoughts, but you wouldn’t “run with them” and allow them to upset you.

      Our Relationship To Thought

      A person’s understanding of the relationship between thought and reality can be put on a continuum:

      On one side is thought as “reality.” Clinically, this would be a psychotic, a person who would never use the word thought. A psychotic actually experiences every thought as СКАЧАТЬ