
How to Stop Negative Thoughts in 180 Seconds Without Meditating - prakhar236
https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-stop-negative-thoughts-in-180-seconds-without-meditating-4ef29cda09d1
======
maxxxxx
"Tony was not born optimistic. He practiced it. He put in the effort.

You can do the same."

The phrase "You can do the same" already shows that this person has never
dealt with real psychological problems. I wish these self-help gurus would
just say "Here is something that works for some people. Try it. Maybe it works
and if it doesn't work it's not your fault". Instead you have to defend
yourself if the well-meant advice from people doesn't work.

~~~
ggg9990
Yes, it’s ironic that the people closest to AI, who should be able to see that
the brain is a physical organ like all others, often have the hardest time
recognizing that cognitive deficits are as real as physical deficits. Some
people can’t “make themselves feel X” any easier than a quadriplegic can dunk
a basketball.

~~~
tamrix
The author is obviously saying that line for encouragement not a statement of
fact.

~~~
maxxxxx
Saying "You can do the same" is extremely condescending and frustrating for
people who have repeatedly tried to solve a problem and failed. It's like some
people tell depressed people "Just go out there and have fun". It's not
helpful.

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bayonetz
Useful framework but the 180 seconds part is false in general. For a typical
person with lots of negative thoughts it will take much longer to do the
countering exercise at any given time. Once you become good at it though, then
it takes no time at all —you counter instinctually and st some you just think
positively from the get go. So the 180 seconds part is just the usual title
clickbaiting.

Again, useful framework but main problem I have with it is for when the
negative thoughts are very real and very deserved. From something small (like
you left your dirty dishes in the sink for your partner to deal with) to
something large (like you ran somebody and killed them while drunk driving),
you screwed up and the thoughts of shame and embarrassment are appropriate.
For things you can’t truly rectify (to make an extreme example, like bringing
someone back to life that you killed), there is often no amount of positive
countering that will overcome it. Similar for things like not liking something
about your appearance that can’t be easily changed like your height. No amount
of positive countering can undo the fact. It ends up looking a lot like
denial, self deception, and minimization to use this framework in these cases.

~~~
creep
Your examples don't fit the use-case of the framework, which is for chronic
negative thinking, for when you wake up and everything is wrong, or if you're
easily triggered by one negative thought which sends you into a tunnel of
negative thinking. Most people don't think of negative examples separately--
for example, losing your job is not usually related to how short you are, but
most people will vaguely correlate the two, if they're in a bad state, and
conclude there might be something inherently wrong with who they are.

When something has gone wrong, one can still think positively about the
situation, but the framework to use in that case is to simply ask 'why' over
and over again until you've found the true root of the problem. The positive
aspect is that you've just been taught a lesson, and you can move on once
you've learned that lesson. In the case of drunk driving and killing someone--
obviously you fucked up because you drove while drunk, but why didn't you stop
yourself from driving drunk? Why were you drunk in the first place? etc.

For negative thoughts about things that can't be changed, that is simply a
matter of perspective. You can put a positive (or non-negative) spin to
anything.

~~~
bayonetz
I think they do though. The drunk-driving-death example could easily lead to
chronic negative thoughts about it. How foolish you were to drive drunk. How
foolish you are to be an alcoholic. How weak you are to be an alcoholic. How
messed up your life will be now for a long time, if not forever. Etc.

So yes, you can spin that or change your perspective like you say, but that
gets to my point: it just verges on self-delusion, minimization, and such. How
do you know you aren’t lying to yourself for selfish relief? Knowing yourself
enough to know when you are doing that is where the real skill is. This simple
framework doesn’t help with that.

~~~
creep
The framework in the article isn't about knowing yourself. You have to know
yourself to create positive thoughts, and you have to create positive thoughts
in the process of knowing yourself.

------
miles
The article begins with a rather dubious "citation":

> According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about
> 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are
> repetitive thoughts.

There is no link to the alleged NSF work (as a funding organization, it is
unlikely they'd be doing this sort of research), and despite the claim being
repeated around the web, there is apparently no legitimate source for it:
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2012/05/09/th...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2012/05/09/the-70000-thoughts-
per-day-myth/) .

~~~
wruza
Just to note, a day has only 86400 seconds in it (and 28800 of them belong to
sleep).

It is also a funny coincidence that seconds-per-day is a multiple of a 14.4k
baud rate.

~~~
qwerty456127
86400 - 28800 = 57600 ≈ 60000. This looks fairly realistic if you ask yourself
about just how much time a day do you maintain perfect inner silence and
equilibrium. I really doubt it's more than about the 400 seconds for the
majority of the people who don't practice meditation (and even these 400
seconds are usually just the unconscious moments). Also ask yourself about how
long do you usually maintain concentration at one single atomic thought
contiguously without switching to random related and unrelated thoughts for
even a moment.

~~~
wruza
It is tempting to say that I spend many time in conscious-inactive mode, but
then it heavily doesn’t add up with what you say. What is a distinct thought
exactly? Do people experience a constant caleidoscope of inner
images/sounds/etc? For me thinking is retrieving conceptions from subconscious
and lining them up on ‘internal board’ to produce results. Another notable
mode is simply recalling events (including feelings) and turning them into
speech. This usually takes many seconds. Can fragmentary distractions in these
processes count as thoughts? If yes, then I should agree, but I’m not sure if
it’s a fair definition. That’s interesting.

I never meditated, but I can easily stare at wall clock or cursor blinking for
few minutes, not experiencing inner visual or acoustic ‘things’.

Edit: btw, I began to do that after reading Colin Wilson’s “Spider World” in
‘00s, where mind control was described in a scifi series. Didn’t know it, but
now looks like consciousness problems are his main interest.

~~~
qwerty456127
You're cool, dude! Definitely not an average person. What you describe is a
meditation of a kind (there are many) actually. Have you tried the next level?
Given you can silence your inner dialogue/monologue/etc while maintaining
awake conscious mind and concentrated attention, "turn around" (your
attention) and try staring at the still space that is the background to where
endogenous mental stimuli (verbal/conceptual thoughts, images, feelings etc)
normally appear, try to find where the point of "you" hides from which you
look at all the images thoughts, stare in this direction rather than on a
physical object or a thought. It sounds crazy like a camera filming itself
without a mirror but it's possible in this realm and feels awesome once you
succeed.

~~~
wruza
Well, thanks! No, I never "turned around", nor do I think that what I
described is particularly cool, since it puts some ~ consequences on the way I
communicate, like e.g. I'm falling off conversation for few seconds before an
answer emerges. But is this next thing safe and pragmatic? Any good read on
that? Asking out of curiosity and because I'm not really into that...
'spiritual' thing that accompanies many mind-related areas.

~~~
qwerty456127
If you feel like looking at your self may be unsafe for you then it probably
is.

------
Jach
> Step 1: Take out a piece of paper or open a writing software on your
> computer or mobile

Instructions unclear, ended up spending the day wallowing in a feedback loop
of negative thoughts that has now only been amplified by noticing I'm so
useless that I can't even open up vim to write about it.

There are lots of ways to potentially "stop negative thoughts", sometimes
taking a caffeine pill can be enough
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28455046](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28455046))
and sometimes forcing your brain to slow down by writing things works. It's
the very first step though, taking any action that has any chance to move you
out of the loop, that seems the most insurmountable when you're inside the
loop. I'm not sure anyone's figured out a way to make that easier, just ways
to avoid falling right back in (ideally indefinitely, such as reliably
noticing (easier said than done) you're falling early enough you can take
action to right yourself before it seems an insurmountable effort, which is
where this/meditation/periodic medication/etc. come in).

------
InclinedPlane
Meditating isn't magic, and it's not hard. It's just practicing exercises that
can have an effect on your mental state, when you do them often enough you can
end up training yourself to have more control over your mental state. You
don't have to "get meditation right" to be able to be doing it. When you
meditate your mind will wander, that's normal, when you meditate you may not
become relaxed, that's normal, when you meditate you may not be able to let go
of anxious or panic inducing thoughts, that's normal. The trick to meditation
is doing it anyway and not having expectations about it, which, ironically, is
how you get better at it and you get better at letting go of unwanted thoughts
and at settling your mind into calmness, etc.

This article is nothing but a description of one way to meditate. If you are
turned off of the idea of meditation because of some preconceived notion of
what it is or how it works I would highly suggest you re-evaluate and look
into it again, it's one of the most helpful life tools that anyone can have,
and absolutely anyone can do it.

~~~
sonnhy
Do you have any suggestions of where to start off?

~~~
lazyasciiart
Headspace is a nice app that does some timed guided meditation - you can start
by aiming to do five minutes each night. It's free for some level of use, I
don't remember the restrictions but the free version is definitely enough to
begin a decent meditation habit.

------
lsalvatore
“Wanting has to go. Wanting to be free from something that is not there is
what you call "sorrow.” Wanting to be free from sorrow is sorrow. There is no
other sorrow. You don't want to be free from sorrow. You just think about
sorrow, without acting. Your thinking endlessly about being free from sorrow
is only more material for sorrow. Thinking does not put an end to sorrow.
Sorrow is there for you as long as you think. There is actually no sorrow
there to be free from. Thinking about and struggling against "sorrow" is
sorrow. Since you can't stop thinking, and thinking is sorrow, you will always
suffer. There is no way out, no escape.” ― U.G. Krishnamurti, Mind Is a Myth

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potatote
I believe that it's not too bad to let negative thoughts pass through our
stream of consciousness everyday. I mean, it's part of being human to have
different kinds of emotion, right? The intervention is necessary ONLY IF one
feels like negative thoughts are occupying too much of his/her mind space and
is debilitating his/her day-to-day functions.

Other than that, we may sometimes be happy, be sad, be angry, be disgusted, be
afraid and so on. Just don't linger on one for too long (know that time will
help us forget) and that's a good enough approach to manage the emotional
flux.

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tpeo
_> According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about
12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are
repetitive thoughts._

What does any of this even mean?

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2012/05/09/th...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2012/05/09/the-70000-thoughts-
per-day-myth/#.WwHi7r1v_qA)

------
henryw
Here's one trick to get out of a "suffering state" and get to a "beautiful
state":

Silently in your head, send blessings (joy, happiness, love, inner peace,
etc.) to people that you encounter in life and people that are playing a part
in your thoughts. Do this whenever you feel the oncoming of an unnecessary
negative emotion.

After 30 to 90 days, a new habit will be formed. And, probably, a new default
peaceful internal state.

~~~
avtar
For more of the science behind approaches like this check out the first four
chapters of 'Hardwiring Happiness' [0] and try the exercises listed in the
book. It sounded like fluff when I first came across it but so far it's helped
me relate to perhaps unsavoury mind states in more healthy ways.

[0]
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385347316/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385347316/)

~~~
henryw
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ve added it to my Audible queue.

------
yellowboxtenant
I'm just going to leave this here
[https://youtu.be/w1tDGtfwZtw](https://youtu.be/w1tDGtfwZtw)

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ifend
This is called "Cognitive Reframing".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reframing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reframing)

