How to stop bad thoughts from sabotaging your happiness

This is mindfulness at its best.

You know when you read something and it sticks with you for life? Don’t worry if you haven’t had one of those experiences yet — you’ll know it when you do.

I had one of those experiences when I read one of James’ articles about a week and a half ago.

We’re all plagued with thoughts. A lot of them appear in our minds and harmlessly slip out of our consciousness before we have even had time to be aware of them.

Some stick — and boy, can they get us down.

Someone calls us a name. We ignore them, yet their cruel voice echoes around in the depths of our heart.

Unexpected bills come, lacing our train of thought with a green poison that slowly sickens us the more we think about it.

A win we thought we had is viciously wrenched out of our hands before we even had time to appreciate it. The disappointment can be gut wrenching.

Sometime last year I received an email from a client that had “thank you” in the subject line.

Smiling to myself, I opened it. He was probably thanking me for the great work I’ve been doing.

WRONG.

He was severing our working partnership. As my eyes flitted over the three sentences in the email. One question screamed through my mind:

“What did I do wrong?”

I called him, he didn’t pick up the phone. My heart was crashing into the walls of my rib cage, fueled with a mix of anger and bewilderment.

We spoke at lunch time. While the work I had done was great, turns out “it wasn’t quite what they were looking for.”

So why lead me on then? Why make me think I was in with a chance?

It took me about a month before I recovered, but during that time, I had let this event rattle my composure more than I should have.

The thoughts would creep into my mind and make me question whether I should have pursued writing.

I’m genuinely quite a mindful person. I know that being conscious of how something makes you feel can help you master your emotions.

But when “big” things happen, they can really challenge your ability to handle rejection and gracefully continue on through life.

Looking back now, I let the thoughts team up on me and pull me into a bog of misery.

The technique that James recommends would have not only helped me recover quicker, but would have also stabilized my mental core from the beginning so that an event like this wouldn’t have rocked me so much.

The art of labeling your thoughts

James uses the simple method of labeling your thoughts with one of two tags: “USEFUL” or “NOT USEFUL”.

You can visualize an IN and OUT pile on your desk if you would like, except instead of “IN” and “OUT” you have “USEFUL” and “NOT USEFUL”.

You’re sitting at your desk, minding your own business and getting work done at Me Inc.

Meanwhile, your workers are lining up at your desk, presenting thought packets to you.

Some are tiny — inconsequential — and you dismiss the worker. Some are bigger. You pay attention to them.

In the past, you might have had a read of it and put it on your desk, adding to the clutter that’s there. You’re not going to do that anymore.

Instead, what you’re going to do is sort it into the “USEFUL” pile or the “NOT USEFUL” pile, that is, you’re going to determine whether the thought is something that helps out your cause or is a detriment.

Say that you have just been told that your boss wants to see you in his office in an hour’s time. You nod and get back to work.

The workers at Me Inc. have just had a new influx of thoughts and they’re rushing to bring them to your desk. You would sort them like this:

am I going to be fired? Crap, I can’t afford to lose my job now! — NOT USEFUL

perfect, now’s a perfect chance for me to show him my recommendations to improve efficiency in the new supply chain — USEFUL

he’s such an asshole. Who does he think he is, bossing me around like that? — NOT USEFUL

he always picks on me, why doesn’t he talk to the new guy instead? — NOT USEFUL

he’s always so busy, I can finally have a talk to him about my annual review — USEFUL

Your mind becomes more efficient and sifting thoughts and filing away the bad ones before they get thrown into a shredder, while keeping the good ones that can improve your status quo.

I love this technique for the following reasons:

• it forces you to face your thoughts. Some people ignore them, which only strengthens the effect they have on you.
• it forces you to decide whether you want that thought to affect you in a negative or a positive way. In the end, that’s all there is to it, isn’t it?
• you can get exponentially more positive by focusing only on the pile that’s in the “USEFUL” side. The feedback loop will ensure that you only take your most positive thoughts.

The other thing about this last point is that it will put the 80/20 rule into action: 20% of your thoughts account for 80% of how you feel. If 20% of your thoughts are positive, dispose of the negative, then within those 20%, another 20% are particularly positive and constructive.

Within that 20% again, there might be 20% more that can change your life.

If you focus on the 20% of the 20%, you’re using your mind like the best thinkers of the world — and the ones who shape how the world grows and changes.

Yes, this technique requires some self discipline at the beginning, but after several days of doing this, you’ll find that you’re more resilient to bad news and will naturally find the good in every situation.

Remember, it’s not about being positive for the sake of being positive, it’s also about turning that positive energy into something that can make your life — and the lives of those you care about — a lot better.