Dealing with depression might make you feel all at once, but it is imperative to choose your thoughts to get better. Thoughts are inevitable to human beings, but they are not necessarily borne to be acted upon. Rather, thoughts are supposed to be treated as something on their own. Human beings have the power to separate positive thoughts from negative thoughts.
Mindfulness is an art of making yourselves aware of your thoughts. You could simply start practicing this by writing down some of your thoughts at the end of the day. This will tell you the kind of thoughts that moved past or stayed with you throughout the day.
Buddhism describes how thoughts can be divided into two different categories- Wholesome thoughts- that lead to happiness and peace and the other one which cause harm or distress. These thoughts form a track for our mind to follow in the future. But it is possible to get selective in choosing those thoughts. Modern neuroscience has also confirmed this about the brain’s plasticity.
1. It’s all about Greys:
Most of our life, as said, is grey with a little tiny bit of black and white! Limiting your life into absolutes will only force your brain into dividing every action into best or worst. Such thoughts will constantly put you into self-evaluation mode. While dealing with depression, it is more important to consider that there are no perfect situations and that these are not the worst of all.
‘ I did not do the best of my job today but atleast I made an effort to finish them.’
2. It doesn’t always happen the same way!
While struggling through negative thoughts, we often try to put all our situations on a similar front and believe that it will always happen this way or everyone will do the same with us. While it’s hard to put your mind into your terms, logically, no two people or situations can ever be the same.
‘No, it will not happen over and over again. It will always be different.’
3. Labels are for Cans, not people!
Putting a label on yourself is how you minimize yourself into one category, evading all the other qualities or possibilities that you may or may not know about yourself. Once your mind gets into a habit of constant labeling, you tend to devalue yourself and if anything goes wrong ever, you reduce yourself to nothing through your own negative thoughts. Labeling yourself will only put you into a closed box (or can) with only one trait. Human beings have a varied bunch of traits- some of which cannot be explored their whole life!
‘I am not a loser; I am not a failure. This is just a temporary setback in my life.’
4. Everything that goes wrong in the world is not your responsibility
Blaming oneself for everything and everyone is one of the most common thoughts that come into the mind of someone dealing with depression. Having such thoughts can also make you feel on an edge at all times leading to a constant burnout. The next time such a thought crosses your mind, imagine the situation where everything worked out, did you give yourself enough credit then? Who would you give credit for then?
‘It’s not always my fault.’
5. Should’ve but Didn’t
We have a tendency of setting expectations for ourselves all the time. While it is good to set goals for oneself, we must know where to put a full stop. Constantly comparing our situations to what it should be conditions our brain into thinking that nothing is going right. Going over such thoughts while dealing with depression, it is important to consider how ‘it is’ different from ‘should be’ and that your mental health is above and beyond how things ‘should’ have been.
‘I should have finished this by now, but it took me more time than I thought.’
Read more articles by The Blissed Men Project
How I let go overthinking and started living in present
I hope you find this blog helpful and comment below to share your experiences and questions.