Reverse Thinking

Schopenhauer - a philosophy for grumpy people?

In my last article - Can feeling grumpy be good for you? I mentioned one of my favourite philosophers - Arthur Schopenhauer - who was a grumpy old man already by the age of 19. I first read him at 15 and developed a 'bah humbug' attitude which was delicious and self-indulgent while it lasted although I no longer think it is clever - or even profound - to be pessimistic about life. Even so, I still think that Schopenhauer possessed a genius for philosophy. (He also wrote a lot about sex).

Here are a few gems:

After your death you will be what you were before       your birth.    

Everyone takes the limit of his own field of vision for the limit of the world.

The conscious mind may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells within the body.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the sight of a letter/email from that person.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Console yourself by remembering that the world doesn't deserve your affection.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

There is no absurdity so obvious but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to introduce it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

The closing years of life are like a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

The greatest of mistakes is to sacrifice health for any other kind of reward.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome.

In my next article I will write about the advantages - and disadvantages - of pessimism for life.

30 annoying thoughts

The universe is too complicated to make final conclusions possible

Self-pity is the worst sin

Your perceptions are based on your biography

The illusion of free will is based on vanity

You are only innocent when you live in the now

Neither Buddha or Christ believed in Religion

Serial killers are extremely boring people

Much of what happens to you is down to chance

Anger and disgust protect you

Alienation produces psychotics, revolutionaries and fundamentalists

Evil people don't understand what they do

Life is so simple that a child of five could get it

Who and what you are is reflected in your behavior

Sex differences are bigger than we imagine

Most people would rather be right than happy

The Self is just a label - perhaps no more than your name

History reveals no progress at all

Moralising is for the small-minded

Democracy is tyrannical

Chemicals have a bigger influence on people than many of us realise

Mind doesn't exist in the Head - it's something you were born into

Your past is a made-up story

Medical science prolongs life but doesn't improve it

Religion is for people who like happy endings

There is something divine in you but its outside your control

Your inner self is genetically coded

Madness is another word for defeat

'Success' and 'failure' are a matter of dates, places and opinions

Your body knows more about you than you do

Your life journey is not determined. If it were you would have been told what to do and where to go.

Image by Tumitu Design

The end of thinking

Tomorrow I am posting up the last in the series on The Effective Thinking Skills Test.

If you haven't taken that test yet you can do it here.

If you want to read previous articles in this series then here are the links:

Who cares what people think?

Effective thinking.

Reclaiming your personal power.

Reverse personality.

Emotional intelligence.

Do you run your mind or does your mind run you?

Tomorrow I will be writing about Personal ownership and self-responsibility.

Instead of wasting your time listening to your Head telling you that you are a 'victim', that other people are 'better' than you, that things happen to you by 'accident', that you need 'expert' help to run your life, or that you are a 'failure' if you are not wealthy, famous or a sex symbol - I want to show you how you can get your life back the way you want it to be.

I have enjoyed writing this series. Like St. Augustine, I often don't know what I think about anything until I have seen what I have written. So now I 'know' more than I did before about how we should be organising our minds.

Let me know if there are any other tests you'd like me to design.

Let me also know if you would like me to write another series on a different subject. I can't promise I will but I will consider all suggestions seriously.

    'Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
     Watch your words, for they become actions.
     Watch your actions, for they become habits.
     Watch your habits, for they become character.
     Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.'

Image of the Buddha at Night by MR+G

Why your life has gone wrong - and what to do about it

The most important reason our lives go wrong is that we give away our power - to Others, to  Life, to God.  We cease to take responsibility for ourselves.

Or we say that Life is Unfair. Or that God has let us down. Or that we could be ok - if it wasn't for our Partner, our Parents, our Children, our Employers, our Doctors, etc, etc.

The first step - if you are blaming others for what has happened to you - is to let it go. Whatever people have done to you happened in the past and its over. Go through a process of forgiveness and decide to make a fresh start.

When you forgive and let go you stop living in the past. That's the next step. You can now stop wasting effort on regrets, recriminations and 'if onlys' and your energy level will start to rise (you will feel relief first).

The next step is to stop waiting for Life to get better. That isn't going to happen until YOU happen to Life. To do that you are going to have to break the habit of procrastination, take risks, try something new and start being more honest with people. One of the important laws of life is that you only get out of it what you put in.

Side by side with that step you stop making excuses: 'That won't work', 'I don't know what to do/how to do it', 'People won't like it', 'It's too scary', 'I'm not attractive', 'It's too difficult', 'I don't have time', etc. Instead of making excuses, do that new course, start talking to people about the help you need, say 'No' to people who drain you and make some more time for yourself. Experiment with new clothes, hair-styles, make-up. If you are shy, then look for people who can teach you some social skills.

By now you should be well on the way to doing the single most important thing that helps you get your life back: living in the present. Not the past and not the distant future. Now. That means focusing your attention (aside from the odd ten minutes you spend planning for the immediate future) on activities that satisfy you today. It also helps if you regularly practice an awareness technique that keeps you grounded in your body in the Now. We teach people how to do this in Reverse Therapy but other approaches - Yoga, Breath training, Tai Chi, Meditation, Qi Gung - can work just as well.

When you discipline yourself to stay in the moment you are also letting go of the Headmind chatter - worries, regrets, blame, guilt, day-dreaming - that kept you locked in the past and paralysed your will.

You can learn how to stop listening to that parrot on your shoulder and start listening, instead, to yourself: your emotions, your desires, your needs, your passion, your inner drive toward love, truth, connection to others and self-fulfilling work (or play). For more advice on how to kill the parrot see Mark McGuinness's blog.

Tomorrow I will post more information on specific things you can do to build the life you really want in 2008.

This will be my last post for 2007. I want to thank all my readers for staying with me and also all those who, throughout the year, have sent me their feedback, comments and helpful suggestions.

God Bless You All

John

 

 

What is Reverse Thinking?

Reverse Thinking is a method you can apply to any idea, any statement, any situation, any problem, any solution, any explanation, or any method. It works particularly well on ideas that people take for granted, or 'received wisdom'.

Reverse Thinking assumes that the opposite way of understanding something - or the reverse idea, will be as interesting, if not more interesting than the first idea. It will certainly be more stimulating and likely to lead to more creative ways of thinking about things.

For example, we might be told that 'people get stressed because they work too hard'. The reverse idea is that they get stressed because they don't work hard enough. Which leads me (personally) to the insight that people get stressed because they don't work hard enough at doing the right things. And that gives us another way of helping people find a solution to stress.

Another good example comes out of Mark Earls' thinking about human beings as primarily social animals. So when we are told that someone is depressed the first assumption is that he has a personal problem. The reverse thought is that he has a social problem. Which leads us straight to the realisation that some people get depressed because they are living through social breakdown and are just very, very lonely. Which might encourage us to concentrate harder on helping people find a way back from exclusion.

Reverse Thinking is based on the insight that the conventional advice given to people who want to change  their behaviour creates traps for them. The multi-million dollar dieting industry is a good example. The received wisdom is that the only way to lose weight is to diet. But in most cases dieting either doesn't work or it makes things worse. Because the more you think about dieting the more you are going to think about the food you are not eating. If we apply the reverse idea (now well supported by the evidence) that dieting doesn't work, we are in a position to help people create life-styles in which the over-consumption/dieting cycle becomes irrelevant.

Reverse Thinking created Reverse Therapy. Back in 2001 I was arguing that most forms of psychotherapy keep people stuck because they focus on getting rid of the symptom. Once we reverse that and look at why symptoms are necessary (unexpressed emotion, work-life imbalance, frustration, unresolved conflict, loss of meaning and purpose, etc) we can help people resolve the real source of the problem.

Reverse Thinking is pragmatic - it focuses on new ways of thinking that trigger creative, useful actions that take change in a new direction. It is not interested in whether ideas are right or wrong - only in whether they are useful.

                                                                                                   'Our minds are lazier than our bodies'      
                                                                                                                                La Rochefoucauld