I'm going to start this video by asking you a question: When you feel cold, do you stay cold or dress warmly? We don't fight the cold; Instead, we look for ways to stay warm, like wearing a sweater or drinking something warm. Likewise, to overcome negative thoughts, we need to learn to think positively.
Stoicism was humanity's first school of thought, and they paid a lot of attention to the way we think. Improving your mind is taking total control of your life, it is developing the ability to actively shape your responses to everything that happens to you. This video brings together Stoic principles into some ways of thinking positively that you can start applying right away in your life.
Epictetus always said that the only function of philosophy is to improve our lives and elevate our moral capacity. Before we start, I want to thank everyone who leaves their comment here on the channel, telling their story and how much they are noticing the changes when practicing the Stoic teachings. To everyone who opens their heart, thank you very much.
I read all the comments and I say, this is just the beginning of our moral progress and our mentality. And each of you has been building this channel together with us. And, if you're new here, don't break this chain.
Like, comment and share this video to someone you know needs to know these teachings. Identify your negative thought patterns. You can't change something without first understanding what needs to be changed.
Negative thoughts can automatically appear in our head, after all, no one is in charge of our thoughts, but we can learn to identify them. The more we notice what we've been thinking, the more we can stop whatever we're thinking. What else comes to mind?
What thoughts do you always think? What I want to do won't work. .
. If I go to the gym, everyone will stare at me, I'll end up feeling embarrassed. .
. I feel like I'm always disappointing my family. .
. Wow, how stupid I am. .
. I'll never be able to do that, it's very difficult for me. .
. I feel like I wasted my youth taking care of others and now I'm alone. .
. I don't know how to do anything right. .
. All my friends have a life plan, it's just me who's lost. .
. These are some examples of negative thought patterns, each one of us has its own story and our thoughts reflect these experiences, forming images in our head. Identify those images that you constantly repeat and start replacing those negative ideas with positive ideas.
I don't know how to do anything right >> so >> I will learn from my mistakes and improve. When you identify what you think and force yourself to use other, more positive words, it changes the dynamics of your thinking. Instead of being part of the illness, you become part of the cure.
You start to think positively and find ways on how to live more positively. To do this, you need to take full control of your attention and observe where your thoughts are. Questioning whether they encourage you to grow and leave you more at peace, or just delay your life.
Also be aware of your body's reactions, the feelings that each thought provokes in you. If just thinking about something makes you angry, your heart races, you start to get excited. .
. It can't be a positive thought. Otherwise, if you think about something, you feel motivated and willing.
This is a thought pattern you must maintain. Noticing our thoughts allows us to stop those that are negative. Other examples of negative actions are actively avoiding people or situations.
To stop sabotaging yourself like this, you need to learn how to transform your thoughts. The key is to simply start paying attention to your thoughts, at any time. This can be a challenge at first, especially if you've never done it before, but it's a fundamental step towards self-knowledge.
Disrupt your negative beliefs and thought systems. Imagine your mind as if it were a bank, which has two accounts: one for negative thoughts and one for positive ones. Every time you have a thought, it's as if make an automatic pix to one of these accounts.
If most of your thoughts are negative during the day, your negative account balance grows. The same happens with the positive. When we face challenges or need to take action, we use the balances in these accounts.
And the type of thinking we have automatically decides which account we will resort to. For example, if you have an important presentation at work and you think: “I'm so anxious at the time that I'm going to embarrass myself. ” Your negative account automatically issues you a statement: reminding you of the times things didn't go well; your argument is a little weak or that time you ended up not passing the interview.
Strengthening the belief that you don't speak well and that you won't succeed. When you start something with a negative pattern, you will hardly be able to have a different result. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, it's as if you literally programmed yourself to fail, it's as if when presenting your work, you had the wrong powerpoint, interrupted the client all the time, and responded wrongly.
In other words, you will act wrongly, at the wrong time, doing the wrong things, to validate your negative thinking and your belief that you don't speak well in public. Every negative thought is a pix on your account, increasing your negative beliefs about yourself. Another way is to add the beliefs of others or cultural beliefs to ourselves, without first questioning their veracity.
For example, a person only grows in life if they are dishonest or act wrong. Let's suppose you start selling lunch boxes, working from Monday to Saturday, making very tasty and fresh food. Start cooking at home, in your kitchen.
And, after a few months, orders increase and you start to make profits, you can buy a new stove, then a new refrigerator. You managed to improve your financial condition, thanks to your work and effort. You didn't have to be dishonest with anyone for this to happen.
Another very popular belief: No man is any good, there's no point in even starting, it won't work, I've already been cheated on, I'll always be cheated on. Not all people act the same way. Just because it happened once doesn't mean you 're destined or destined for it forever.
It may be harder to find people who want a serious relationship, but they do exist. All the time we close ourselves off from opportunities, take cultural beliefs and act on them. We adopt negative thoughts about money, relationships, food and many other aspects of our lives.
One of the lines of thought of Stoicism is the importance of carefully evaluating each situation and action, this teaches us that we must "rethink our judgments". It means learning to see beyond our first reactions, adopting a more optimistic and rational view. If you do this for a few weeks, repetition will help you change the structure of your thoughts and changes will truly happen in your life.
Learn to develop positive mental processes. Consider the importance of this thought from Marcus Aurelius: “The time has come for you to realize that there is something in you stronger and more powerful than that which influences you, controls you and makes you act as if you were a puppet… …The things in which you Thinking determines the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.
” Marco Aurélio, without even knowing it, created the basis for what we know today as Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. This therapy proposes that our thoughts directly influence our feelings and actions. If we change negative thought patterns, we can reshape our emotional responses and live more positively.
Stoics know that it takes a lot of practice to stop allowing fear, anger, and other bad emotions to block the logical thinking that we are all capable of. No matter how frequent or automatic your negative thoughts are, or if you can't get rid of them, you have the ability to transform them. We can learn to think differently with effort and control over ourselves.
One of the strategies you can start practicing to better manage your mind is take control of your thought system. Just as each negative thought increases your account balance, the same rule applies to your positive account. Every time you think, question or view something in a positive way, you make a pix on your account.
For example, early in the morning, you spill coffee on the floor. Instead of thinking that your day started badly and is only going to get worse, see it for what it really is, a simple accident. Boring and uncomfortable because you will have to clean up or maybe need to change your clothes.
But it's an isolated event that doesn't define your day. See it as a reminder not to do things on autopilot. Positive thinking teaches your brain to find pathways to a more positive life by making positive thoughts more frequent.
Negative thinking operates in exactly the opposite direction, training your mind to produce more thoughts that pull you towards negativity and failure. Your positive account grows when you think positively, when you ask yourself positive questions or when you seek a positive approach to what happens to you. Each of them is an automatic pix.
Our second strategy is to learn to evaluate the impact and time we dedicate to each thought. Some people hold on to negative thoughts and feelings because they focus on them more than anything else. In other words, when we obsess over the same negative thoughts, we place enormous value on them, causing those thoughts to last longer than they should.
It's like you turn up the volume on something bad, making it even worse in your head. For example, imagine someone who recently lost their job and starts to think that they will never find another, that they won't pass the interviews, that they will run out of money and get into debt. These negative thoughts paralyze anyone .
The more importance given to these thoughts, the longer they will last. This leads to a vicious cycle of negativity, where the person becomes trapped in negative thoughts, losing the ability to see clearly and closing themselves off to any opportunity or solution, even if it is right in front of them. Giving exaggerated weight to difficulties makes negative thoughts last longer and dominate the mind.
Although this situation is quite difficult and challenging, thinking positively means seeing clearly and looking for possible solutions, without the weight and despair caused by negative thinking. Stoicism shows us how to see every problem as a chance to grow by changing how we respond emotionally. When we cannot control the wind, we have to adjust our sails and change our course gradually until a new direction is reached.
As a third strategy, we can understand the transience of life. It's difficult to recognize the fleeting nature of life, as we naturally want the good times to last forever and the bad to never come to us. Seneca warned us about this when he said: “imagine that your good luck will never end and that your gains will not only continue, but will increase.
Forgetting the seesaw on which human affairs rest, they are sure that fortunes will remain stable only for them. ” Seneca highlighted our tendency to ignore the instability of the human condition, believing in the constancy of luck always in our favor. There is nothing in the world that supports our illusion, the year is renewed every twelve months, the climate is renewed every season.
All things in nature change, nothing stays the same. So, no matter how much we may suffer for something today, it is important to remember that this pain is temporary. So, practically speaking, when a negative thought or something persists in your mind, ask yourself, and in ten years, will it still make sense?
Will it be as important as it is now? Do you remember what thoughts and great concerns occupied your mind ten years ago? Possibly not.
When we reframe our problems and negative thoughts ten years from now, we can lessen the importance and impact they have on the present. This helps us understand that rarely is something so crucial and important to the to the point of affecting our lives in the long term. Marcus Aurelius once said that our thoughts color our soul, showing how our way of thinking has a great impact on us.
And, when our mind is full of negative thoughts, the most common way to express them is by complaining. Complaining becomes a negative emotional outburst, it's an overflow, and complaining is so easy that people often don't even realize they are bogged down in complaints. Complaining takes us off the right path, contradicting Stoic teachings that value harmony with nature and gratitude.
To change this pattern, we need to take a mental step back, noticing when we start complaining and then working to stop this behavior. Epictetus, a teacher of Stoic philosophy, taught that to overcome bad habits it is best to make changes little by little. He taught his students a thirty- day challenge to get rid of harmful habits.
If anyone managed to avoid the bad habit during this time, Epictetus would thank the Gods. You can focus on one day, one hour without complaining and maintain that absolute control of not declaring your emotional dissatisfaction. Sometimes we confuse the idea of thinking positively with a form of positivity that is only superficial.
When we start paying attention to what we are thinking and practice each exercise, we are gradually changing the structure of our thought processes, that is, we gradually change the way we think. It's an internal change, which takes time and effort to happen. If we commit to this process over the course of a few months, changes will truly happen in our lives.
In contrast, superficial positivity, the name itself already defines the meaning, is just an external appearance. An example of this is to firmly believe that we are going to win in the mega event; Despite the momentary feeling of euphoria, the real probability of winning is minimal, regardless of optimism. This kind of superficial positivity is just paying lip service.
Without worrying about changing, that's why when you practice it you feel good right away and in the long term you don't see results or differences. To truly transform our thought patterns, repetition is our last and most essential strategy. And in this process it is important to be patient with yourself.
Imagine that in recent years, every negative thought of yours was a pix in your negative account, which has a booming balance. Now, you need to learn the opposite way, and start thinking positively. This requires effort, attention and self-control.
By repeating each positivity exercise daily, and not blaming yourself for some failures or forgetfulness, in a short time these positive thoughts will begin to influence your actions and behaviors, leading to real and noticeable change. In this video we talk about how to identify your negative thought patterns, how to interrupt your negative beliefs and thoughts and how to learn to develop positive mental processes. And finally, let's talk about your right to think positively and experience good things in life.
Sometimes we think so negatively that we start to think it's normal to have bad things. We begin to not care about receiving less from life, to take ourselves for granted, and to accept friendships or relationships with people who don't really care about us. We can also punish ourselves, failing to develop our capabilities or slowing down, either for fear of rejection or for feeling that we don't deserve a better life.
The complete change lies in the affirmative imperative, in giving yourself the order: give yourself permission to think positively and be happy. Give yourself permission with conviction. Recognize that you can learn to think positively and you can start doing so from now on.
You can look around you, think about external things or the people you live with, none of them can decide this for you. Your true happiness can only come from you! Addressing his students, the Stoic master Epictetus was also categorical on this point: “Do not seek what is good outside yourselves; search within yourselves, or you will never find it.
” And, it starts with giving yourself permission, with conviction, to adopt a positive mental stance. Tonight, before you go to sleep, think about this. Tomorrow when you wake up, give yourself permission with conviction, write your decision on a piece of paper or on your cell phone pad, and you give yourself permission with conviction to think positively and be happier.
As Marcus Aurelius said: “Give yourself a gift: The present moment. ” And if you made it this far, comment: “Gratitude”. Now, to learn how to live your best life through Epictetus' twenty-two principles, watch the video on your left.
Thanks again for watching.
