“My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes, most of which have never happened.”
What a great quote by Mark Twain. It humorously summarizes something that is so true, so important, and so often ignored.
Our minds are constantly bombarded with negative thoughts, visions of horrible things that may happen to us, and terrifying reasons not to do the things we want to do.
And yet in the end, these horrible things rarely happen. The thoughts cause pain by twisting yourself into thinking that things are not “kol beseder” (everything is ok, or s’all good, in Hebrew).
The worst part is that these thoughts disturb us for so long and we never do anything about them!
Well, that’s about to change.
Luckily, we have a very powerful technique available to us called “reframing”. Reframing involves identifying our unhelpful thoughts and replacing them with more positive or adaptive ones.
I used this link yesterday because it had a great explanation of reframing techniques. However, their opening statement is one of my pet peeves.
“My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes, most of which have never happened.”
This statement implies that most bad things don't happen. Yes it is true but my version goes more like this:
My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes, that I pray never happen again.
Do you see the subtle difference between the two?
2 comments:
I like how you reframed. It isn't denying the terrible misfortunes that have happened.
Thanks TR.
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