“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
Pragmatism believes that the mind is a tool. Your mind should work for you,not against you. People who don’t master their mind, don’t believe it’s possible.
They say: “I can’t help but thinking these things.”
Well, you can with enough practice. It’s a skill.
In other words: You have the ability to decide what you think. Or, you can choose NOT to think.
And that is one of the most important and most practical things you can learn in life. Before I learned that skill, I would spend hours and hours inside my head.
Just think about how much you think.
- “I wonder what my boss thinks?”
- “What happens if I screw up and lose my job?”
- “Does she love me?”
- “I think he doesn’t care about me.”
- “I just keep failing.”
- “Why does my life suck?”
- “Why is my life awesome, and other people’s lives are not?”
- “What if I get cancer?”
- “I don’t care about my job. Is there something wrong with me?”
- “I can’t finish anything. What’s wrong with me?”
And the list goes on. That is all REAL shit. That’s stuff people tell me when I ask them what they worry about.
You know what those thoughts do to you? Guilt, anger, suffering.