"END TIMES ARE COMING SO HARD AND SO FAST!"
"A real man should take charge and that's what'll make women fuck you"
"You're not much, if they're dating someone, chances are they'll be much better off. You had one good moment but ignore them, move on. They're happy. You barely know how to keep yourself happy"
"Just fuck a bitch and get it over with, stop pondering. Be a man and dick her down."
"Love's wasted on everyone, what is the point of trying to fight to feel normal."
"only a few conversations here and there and I feel like if she tragically were paralyzed or mangled head to toe, not one ounce of me would want to leave her side. I am insane. But I think that's okay"
Took these from different books, paraphrased a few. Point is a ton of influences all around. Guess these are my most prominent ones stirring. Or I feel a lot can relate with these examples. Inspiration for paths we could take. More regrets to make. I know life is all about that but I know I struggle immensely to "change" my mind. And I see others struggle daily. The mind typically doesn't really change though. It's all "will power" and repetition I think. Constant struggle. My life was extremely stuck in repetition for 5 years and I think it fucked me up more than anyone will know. Maybe therapy is an answer, I just rather be my own therapist as much as possible. The mind is fragile and versatile, give in to it too much, I see too many disconnect as well as myself. Life loses it's potential when we just act as others do. I think we each need to search our own life and penetrate our energies deeper.
This has been "completely sober talks with lotty" have a day, just a day.
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For me, it's a matter of repetition and cultivating habits and thought patterns as you mentioned. I wouldn't put too much emphasis on will power though beyond just the most basic desire to do it. I've not found it requires all that much to repeatedly challenge and reframe our counter-productive thought patterns although it does require some discipline to do it as often as we can.
That might raise the question of what do we change our minds towards? What thought patterns should we accept vs. seek to challenge and gradually change?
And to me, the answer is logic, positivity, practicality, romance, and idealism. Some of these might seem like they conflict with each other, like practicality, romance, and idealism, although they don't with my interpretation (I'll cover why below).
Logic
So there are clearly irrational thoughts we can have. As a blatant example, say we think we have the worst job in the world. That's obviously hyperbole, and it's a type of hyperbole that will make us feel worse each time we work. It's self-inflicted pain. Logic corrects that type of thinking; obviously it's not the worse job, obviously some people have it worse, obviously things could be far worse.
Positivity
The glass is half full. That's not at all illogical. It's not even optimistic. It's just a practical observation of the present situation (assuming we have a glass that's half full). That's not tying our idea of happiness to some prophecy of the future, like expecting someone to buy us another drink which could lead to bitter disappointment.
It's just finding happiness in the present. Seeing the glass as half-empty is equally logical, but it's a negative interpretation of the present. That's going to make us feel worse. So always seek to correct negative interpretations of the present and replace them with equally logical but positive interpretations.
Practicality
We have to be practical with our expectations. I'm 173cm. I'm not going to have any real chance of becoming an NBA star. That's fine. I can still enjoy basketball, I even have endless room for improvement. To hold impractical expectations can only lead to disappointment.
Romance
It helps to romanticize things to derive more meaning and value out of them. By romance, I'm not talking necessarily in the realm of sexuality and relationships with people of our sexual orientation. I'm talking about seeing things as more than the sum of their parts.
A Rembrandt can be much more than oil pigment on canvas, a 7-course French dinner can be much more than a tedious and overly expensive way to get macro and micro nutrients, love can be much more than chemicals in the brain, a person can be much more than the likes of organs and flesh, etc.
To strip everything down to the sum of their material components will strip away most of the value and meaning we can find in them to enrich our lives. There's a technical validity to describing things this way in our minds and out loud, but they quickly start to work towards a miserable and nihilistic outlook of the word. This isn't a sign of wisdom in my book; intellect, perhaps, but an intellect devoid of creativity and imagination. It's lazy.
Idealism
Idealism isn't impractical because it's not an expectation. If it was an expectation, it wouldn't be an ideal in the first place. Ideals are something we reach towards, not something we should ever expect to grasp. We should idealize things, not with the expectation of reaching those ideals, but with the expectation of improving things in ways we can't if we don't idealize things.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/loay2imHq5EI've also never managed to receive any therapy, although I'm not at all averse to the idea. The main problem is that here in Japan, psychotherapy isn't at all popular. The typical mental doctor here just does a quick diagnosis like a physician and prescribes antidepressants and mood stabilizers, and I never wanted to be on such meds.
So I ended up studying these things for myself trying to become the best self-therapist I can be. It's probably an inferior solution but I've improved so substantially over the almost two decades of practice I've done in terms of experiencing so much less stress, becoming so much more difficult to upset, etc.
Above is my best attempt at describing the kind of synthesis of thought patterns I've developed, drawing inspirations from various cultural ideas, Stoicism, Buddhism (my wife is Buddhist which helps), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Logotherapy, and just some personal twists from my own life experiences.
This is what I've found so that helps me to find the most meaning, beauty, happiness, and inner peace in my life. Beauty is especially important to me as one into the arts. I try to find the beauty in everything with the way I think, both big and small.
As for where my head space is now, each year I've gotten better and better just relatively speaking with the exception of the pandemic period. I turned from a social binge drinker into a binge drinker at home (I never drank alcohol at home before), and the home doesn't shut down. Before I at least tended to avoid going full-blown maniac drunk just because the bars closed and I'd be forced to go home. When I started drinking at home, I could drink around the clock and I experienced a level of drunkenness to the point where I was starting to develop dementia-like symptoms even when sober.
So that was a massive setback but I just quit drinking alcohol completely for good towards the end of last year and back on track. I'm feeling better than ever before now in ways I haven't since before the pandemic.
I'm admittedly always a work in progress. In absolute terms, I have had a pretty damaged childhood, possibly PTSD from a gang beating that left me hospitalized, a lot of cognitive distortions and, in the past, sometimes even inexplicable bouts of rage.
Yet each year I whittle away at these things as I learn to think in better and better ways that make me cheerful far more often than not.
I see it in realistic way