At my worst moments, my mind can be described as junkyard filled with giant heaps of waste that nobody will ever have any use of - everything from abandoned gym equipment to embarrassing stashes of porn collections, worn out clothes and roles, toothbrushes dirty with gossip and pettiness and all the content of every possible 'DELETE' folder I have ever made on my desktop. Because I know I'm no special snowflake, it terrifies me to think of what might be lurking in other people's minds. So I simply don't do that.
I let everyone, myself included, have all the junk floating around their minds as much as they want and never judge myself for its content. The only thing I do when a really nasty thought pops up is to pay attention to it, give a mental nod to it and allow it to exist, and then, starting from that point of accepting it there, I try to oppose it and I guess I developed special ways that work for me when dealing with different kinds of thoughts depending on the underlying emotion behind them. For example, when I think about something (or someone) that causes the rise of:
1. Pride - I think of all the ways in which I may be inferior to that person, and I can usually find plenty things to work with. I remind myself that I could have easily found myself in the same life circumstances as the person I am looking down upon, and that I doubt I would be much better.
2. Envy - if I start feeling envious of someone, I try to think of them as my brother/sister, and for some reason that turns the envy into happiness for the other person, because I know I want everything best for my brother. If that doesn't work, I try to ponder ways in which this person might be suffering and that we should all just live our own lives instead of bothering others. And if that doesn't work (wow, I just realized I might be very envious), I plainly ask myself whether this emotion is doing any good except for bringing me misery and destroying that very moment.
3. Lust - I find opposite sex friendships to be tricky because I am always afraid that my friendliness will be misinterpreted as flirting, so I developed a great yardstick against which I can measure my own as well as other people's behavior to see if it is in any way inappropriate. I picture the other person as my brother, and then if from that perspective the way we communicate is totally natural and normal, there is nothing to worry about. On the other hand, if I find that my projected sibling is acting a bit creepy, that's a red flag that the person is getting the wrong idea.
4. Anger - the quickest way to deal with it for me is to transform the wrongdoer into a 5-year-old version of that person and then they seem either ridiculous and endearing (if what they did was a minor problem) or unfortunate and somewhat tragic if what they did was really wrong. In the latter case, I start feeling sorry for them and want to protect them, instead of feeling angry at them. But the problem with anger is that it leaves a kind of echo after the first surge of it has subsided, so I tend to look back and think "How could you have done this to me? How could you? To me! How could you...", but I admit I still haven't figured out a proper way to deal with these residual waves of resentment.
I let everyone, myself included, have all the junk floating around their minds as much as they want and never judge myself for its content. The only thing I do when a really nasty thought pops up is to pay attention to it, give a mental nod to it and allow it to exist, and then, starting from that point of accepting it there, I try to oppose it and I guess I developed special ways that work for me when dealing with different kinds of thoughts depending on the underlying emotion behind them. For example, when I think about something (or someone) that causes the rise of:
1. Pride - I think of all the ways in which I may be inferior to that person, and I can usually find plenty things to work with. I remind myself that I could have easily found myself in the same life circumstances as the person I am looking down upon, and that I doubt I would be much better.
2. Envy - if I start feeling envious of someone, I try to think of them as my brother/sister, and for some reason that turns the envy into happiness for the other person, because I know I want everything best for my brother. If that doesn't work, I try to ponder ways in which this person might be suffering and that we should all just live our own lives instead of bothering others. And if that doesn't work (wow, I just realized I might be very envious), I plainly ask myself whether this emotion is doing any good except for bringing me misery and destroying that very moment.
3. Lust - I find opposite sex friendships to be tricky because I am always afraid that my friendliness will be misinterpreted as flirting, so I developed a great yardstick against which I can measure my own as well as other people's behavior to see if it is in any way inappropriate. I picture the other person as my brother, and then if from that perspective the way we communicate is totally natural and normal, there is nothing to worry about. On the other hand, if I find that my projected sibling is acting a bit creepy, that's a red flag that the person is getting the wrong idea.
4. Anger - the quickest way to deal with it for me is to transform the wrongdoer into a 5-year-old version of that person and then they seem either ridiculous and endearing (if what they did was a minor problem) or unfortunate and somewhat tragic if what they did was really wrong. In the latter case, I start feeling sorry for them and want to protect them, instead of feeling angry at them. But the problem with anger is that it leaves a kind of echo after the first surge of it has subsided, so I tend to look back and think "How could you have done this to me? How could you? To me! How could you...", but I admit I still haven't figured out a proper way to deal with these residual waves of resentment.
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