What you’ll also realize is that you don’t have a natural aversion to your emotions. They aren’t “bad.” They don’t feel “bad,” even though your brain wasn’t taught to label them as “good.” We enjoy sadness, and pain, and everything else, at the appropriate time, to the appropriate extent. We enjoy it because it is an aspect of simply allowing our emotions to be.
It’s not our thoughts that create our lives, it’s how we use our thoughts to dissect the meaning of our emotions, and how based on our assertions, we decide what’s “good,” “bad,” “right” and “wrong.” None of these things inherently exist. The symphony that results from our orchestration of them is what creates our perception of whether or not we’re living a good life.
98
THE POWER
of negative
THINKING
If you want to be emotionally free, there is only one thing you need to understand: Whatever problem you think you have right now is not the actual problem. The problem is that you do not know how to think about your problem correctly.
You’re sick of platitudes. But this isn’t really something you can afford to ignore. This isn’t just advice that may perhaps be applicable to some people, sometimes, in certain situations. It is not just a kind notion that can soothe you on a hard day. It’s not just something you can lean on when you’ve exhausted all other options.
The point of experiencing anything is learning how to think about it differently. When you do not do the work of learning to think differently, you become stuck.
The more we experience, the more capable we are of seeing the world with varied lenses, thinking with more dimension, considering possibilities that were previously inconceivable. Real education is not learning what to think about, but how to think in general.
Learning how to better ignore negative thoughts is not learning how to think; it’s learning how to disassociate. Our negative thoughts inform us as much as positive ones do. Rather than becoming afraid, we can learn to see them as directives, or at the very least, if we can be discerning about what we ascribe meaning to, we can decide what matters to us, and to what degree.
Therein is the power of negative thinking.
As the Stoics practiced negative visualization (imagining the worst possible outcomes and then preparing for them), learning how to think is the simple art of recognizing that you choose how you apply meaning and emotion to your life.
And if you don’t consciously decide what matters and what doesn’t, you’ll spend the rest of your life in feeling patterns, responding to what you were
conditioned by when you were young.
The solution is not a hyper-focus on positivity (as mainstream pop psych would have you believe), but learning how to turn the shadow aspects of your mind into forces that ignite change and inspire growth.
Emotional freedom and inner peace come from knowing what to do when those negative thoughts and feelings arise, because they will.
As Jonah Lehrer explains, we regulate our emotions by thinking about them. Our prefrontal cortexes allow us to think about our own minds. Our brains think about themselves. Psychologists call it metacognition.
We know when we are angry, because each feeling state must come with a degree of self-awareness, so we can figure out why we’re feeling what we’re feeling. Without that awareness, we wouldn’t know we are afraid of the lion that’s charging at us in the wild, so we wouldn’t run to escape it. If we didn’t run away, what would be the point of the feeling in the first place?
But more importantly, if a feeling doesn’t make sense—if the amygdala is responding to a “loss frame,” then it can be ignored. “The prefrontal cortex can deliberately choose to ignore the emotional brain”—that is, if it determines there is no merit in ascribing meaning.
What this means is that whatever problem you think you have in your life is not the problem, it’s the fact that you see it as a problem, rather than a signal you refuse to respond to, or a product of over-ascribing meaning, extrapolation, irrational thoughts that created irrational emotions that continue to go unchecked, and so on.
It is the fact that you see the problem as a problem rather than a fallacy in your understanding, your focus, your perception.
The problem is not the problem, it is how you think about the problem.
If you want to function, you have to learn how to think about your feelings. The difference between the kind of anxiety that paralyzes you and the kind of fear that accompanies anything brave and worthwhile is discernment, which takes practice. The difference between the kind of people who turn their obstacles into opportunities and the kind of people who are crushed beneath the weight of their own uncertainty is knowledge and awareness.
Being uncomfortable forces us to think of options that we wouldn’t have had to imagine before.
It is why heartbreak is crucial to human growth. The obstacle that becomes the way. Any idiot can enjoy the positive things in their lives, but it is only a few that can take the negative and find something even more profound.
99
WHAT YOU
need to do
TO HEAL YOUR LIFE
FROM ANXIETY
01. The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s connection. The same is true for anxiety. Anxiety is being disconnected from the present moment, other people, or yourself. Usually all three. You must reconnect with your life.
02. You must give yourself permission to want what you really want.
There is no way around this. Whether it’s a romantic partner, a better job, some more money, recognition for your work, see it and accept it, even if you think society says it means you’re shallow or broken or don’t “love yourself” enough.
03. If you can’t figure out what you really want, look straight at your deepest fears. What’s on the other side of them? That’s what you want.
04. Be grateful for your discomfort. The sad and weird thing is that happy people are complacent. Feeling uncomfortable is the signal that you’re on the precipice of something new and better, but you must take action.
05. Your new best friends will be structure and productivity. It’s not about checking off a 100-point task list; it’s about knowing that you accomplished something (anything!) that contributes to your well-being each day.
06. “Irrational anxiety” is usually cured by doing very practical things.
The nonsensical things you worry about are usually aggrandized projections of real concerns that you’re not dealing with.
07. You must start where you are, you must use what you have, and you must do what you can. Anything else is running away from your
