Living into Better Thinking
I know the opposite sounds truer.
I know many believe we need to think our way into better living, but that hasn’t been my experience.
Thinking is open-ended and messy; and when I think I should be thinking better I’m actually telling myself to do the impossible — to not think what I am thinking about.
All this does — at least for me— is screw up useful thinking about anything.
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. I did the recently when I stopped drinking soft drinks — both sugar and diet.
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 trickier to tell myself that I will always have a lot to learn but that I have the capacity to do just that.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.