How to Get out of Your Own Head

How to Get out of Your Own Head
How to Get out of Your Own Head

Our memory banks contain millions of details, and they shoot to the surface at the slightest provocation, each with their own emotional signature.

The human mind is a high-horsepower free-association machine

  • The mind connects what’s happening in the present to anything in its vast archives that might be relevant
  • This allows us to remember where we live, what a ripe avocado feels like, and other important predictive information
  • Sometimes, though, the mind’s suggestions aren’t just useless, but upsetting

When the Mind Gets Stuck

  • The thinking mind has no master plan, just ideas
  • We have little direct control over whether we have ruminative thoughts or not
  • The mind makes its associations without our consent, and gathers momentum easily
  • We can’t turn that feature off, but we can learn to see them for what they are

Practice treating thoughts like a TV in the other room

  • To the degree you’re able to see thoughts as the hallucinations they are, you won’t be perturbed by them.
  • There are really only two kinds of thought: mental image and mental talk
  • Thought is only ever made of those two ingredients, regardless of the subject matter, and those ingredients are never themselves upsetting
  • We can loosen the emotional grip of our thoughts by learning to see them as raw mental image and mental talk, tuning out of the content in the process

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