Living into a Better Way of Thinking
I know the opposite sounds like the true statement - that we need to think our way into better living, but that does not seem to fit with my experience.
I think this is because thinking is open-ended and messy.
Also, when I think I should be thinking better I’m actually telling myself to do the impossible - that is to not think what I am thinking about. All this does is screw up thinking productively about anything except the narrow subject of how the process of thinking might work and how improving it (whatever that looks like) might improve my life.
Effective thinking is mostly a subconscious activity. It goes on all the time. I can direct it a little but I don’t personally do a good job managing it. And when trying to manage my thinking I find my life less enjoyable and fruitful.
Living, on the other hand, is what I do moment by moment and oftentimes I can improve everything about how I think by continually making, on the whole, better choices and eliminating things I already know are really garbage.
This isn’t complicated, just difficult in the sense it turns out to be a good bit of self-denial or, to put it in a more palatable way, exercising self-control.
Living is also more of a balancing act than my pure thinking on the matter at first leads me to believe. It’s easier to lose weight in my mind than in real life. I think all I have to do are three or four simple steps. I tell myself it’s a no-brainer. And perhaps it is. The less brain the better.
The more moment to moment good decision making the better. But living in the moment, in the present, requires a number of things to be going for me.
I can’t be in extreme pain or duress.
I need to like myself enough to want to improve my situation - which itself can be tricky because I have to like myself without flattery, otherwise as I see my shortcomings and weaknesses I will just give up and want to punish myself.
It’s easy to tell myself I deserve nothing good because I am worthless. It’s tricky to tell myself that I will always have a lot to learn but that I have the capacity to do just that.
