today at work i thought about attitudes and moods... how people treat others depending on the situation or who might have been present at the time...
long story short, double standards and special rules for special people are things that irritate me to no end...
as such, my mood is swung one way to the other, depending on the attitudes being thrown around at the time.
in recent times i have had close friends (who shall remain nameless) express feelings of stress, distress, anger - all those sorts of nasty feelings.
it gave me an opportunity to share some information that i have learned for myself in the last couple of years.
the main thing is (along with "go to bed when you are actually tired") thoughts are non-stop processes in your brain. you can't stop them, no matter how hard you try. the skill (as opposed to a trick, as it is a skill to learn) is being able to let them slide through your mind without actually hooking into it.
i read a book about 18 months ago that some good friends lent to me - the happiness trap, dr russ harris - it was a great starting point with learning how to let thoughts be, instead of hooking into them, or using valuable energy trying to avoid them or block them out.
from this and through a few psychological sessions, one of the handy tips i learned to unhook my mind from thoughts, was a little game with numbers or the alphabet... for example(s):
- count the number of trees in a field, the number of a particular style of registration plate etc - setting yourself a target depending on your situation (e.g. i tried counting the number of new style of victorian rego plates between ballarat and home aiming for a total of 10)
- name countries/capital cities with each letter of the alphabet
- whilst driving i try to find the letters of the alphabet in consecutive order during my trip to or from work, using rego plates, road signs etc - this was an amazing aid for me in letting go of other peoples driving and causing road rage within myself
as simple (or ridiculous) as these games might sound, it's quite interesting how quickly it helps with unhooking from whatever thought you might have been hooked into, and how often you can use the same game to continue unhooking from the thought
at the end of the day, the important thing to remember is that you cannot control anyone else's thoughts, feelings, actions etc but you can control how you react to them.
the overall quick run down of the book i mentioned above, is that most people are under the illusion that happiness is something to achieve, when in fact, it isn't achievable as a single thing. the idea is to live by your values and do things that satisfy and mean the most to you, and this will in turn give you satisfaction which gives you the feeling of happiness.
it is indeed the quality, not the quantity, with which we measure our lives.
so the next time you feel like your mood is about to do a 180° shift, try to deflect the thought of what might be about to bring you down, and start counting things, or try naming foods from A to Z - it's harder than you think, no matter how rehearsed your answers might be the more often you do it!
alternatively - start a blog! i'm really quite pleased with myself doing this everyday so far, and how it gives me great satisfaction when i post one.
just remember that you can't control thoughts but you can control how you react to them.
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