Right, I've had the experience that thoughts can deeply affect my mood and how I feel about life and myself. I wonder, though, why most people seem to simply leave it at that - "some thoughts are bad, be aware of that". Where's any kind of advice on actually dealing with this mind of ours? Sure, we have meditation and mindfulness, and at least meditation seems to be very effective for many things (I don't know enough about mindfulness). But is the mind really such a chaotic and uncontrollable beast that the only alternative is to focus/quiet it (meditation), or to symbolically shrug at the impermanence of its temperament?
We tell people to exercise if we want to get stronger, but the mind is seemingly something that we either try to repress in an unhealthy way (alcoholism and friends), just blurt out/vent whatever it has been nagging us with lately ("talking about our feelings"), or meditate/mindfulness. The last alternative seems very promising and healthy, though sorely underutilized by most people, even the "my body is my temple". But I find it strange that there aren't more alternative (and complementary) approaches that are being suggested, like trying to think more constructively ("positive thinking" being a part of this).
People who see the mind as a separate and wild beast will probably say that the mind can not be controlled. And I would be inclined to agree. But I think it can be steered to some degree, or at least nudged.
Mindfulness is not enough. For one thing, being mindful of your breathing won't help you a bit when dealing with unpleasant thoughts. But you can start to become more mindful of these thought, especially when not in a formal meditation.
The "observing" of these thoughts alone can improve the situation a lot.
Mindfulness training also improves the prefrontal cortex and thus the ability to control impulses and thoughts. The idea is to evolve the ability to choose to have a certain thought or not.
Knowing what to do is one thing, doing it is another. Meditation can immensely improve the latter!
Meditation is not a sufficient treatment for depression or suicidal thoughts, but it can help to avoid relapses, and it helps to deal with the consequences of recurring depressions.
I have found basic cognitive behavioral therapy techniques like the "three column method" to be immensely helpful in dealing with negative thoughts/moods. Especially in combo with meditation. Copy of the book 'Feeling Good' is about 10$ and will teach you how to do it and give lots of good examples in different practical contexts, or just google 'triple column method cognitive therapy'.
Steps are generally: write down your automatic thoughts when you are feeling bad, identify how they are irrational or distorted, write down more accurate, balanced, realistic ones -> feeling better.
It's a can of worms - there's this notion of freedom of religion for instance.
Anybody can think and believe any crazy idea as long as it's a fairly mainstream religion. That's our current state of affairs - we take any ideas seriously as long as many people take them seriously.
There's not much other criteria at play.
So people live with crazy incompatible ideas that keep causing internal conflict and what vague solution can you propose that'll sell? (Capitalism is the new religion, so things MUST sell :)) Right, 'mindfulness' - in other words, just don't pay attention to the internal conflicts you are continually having - they'll go away on their own.
They don't really, but we can't say ok, we have to use logic and sense to approach these things - because then archaic ideas like freedom of religion are going to fall apart.
So we are where we are, mindfulness, 'positive thinking' and other sterile methods that don't talk about the real problem - your mind is a big mess and it'll take a while to sort through it.
We as a society haven't even started - we're too busy coping with never-ending fuck-ups that stem from people in power not losing their heads for being incompetent. Of course they love it that way, they're at the top of the heap and beyond scrutiny, how convenient. Just don't get caught with hookers and blow.
We tell people to exercise if we want to get stronger, but the mind is seemingly something that we either try to repress in an unhealthy way (alcoholism and friends), just blurt out/vent whatever it has been nagging us with lately ("talking about our feelings"), or meditate/mindfulness. The last alternative seems very promising and healthy, though sorely underutilized by most people, even the "my body is my temple". But I find it strange that there aren't more alternative (and complementary) approaches that are being suggested, like trying to think more constructively ("positive thinking" being a part of this).
People who see the mind as a separate and wild beast will probably say that the mind can not be controlled. And I would be inclined to agree. But I think it can be steered to some degree, or at least nudged.