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Saturday, February 18, 2012

Working the "not useful" response.

This seems important.

The Power of Negative Thinking Altucher Confidential:
"...This is the hard part. Stop yourself for just a second in the middle of your mental maze of anguish. Label the thought you were thinking “useful” or “not useful”. If someone shat on my face and now I’m thinking about my mental argument wth him or her. This is “not useful”. If you label enough thoughts “not useful” then “Intense” anger might turn into “Moderate” anger. “Moderate” anger might turn into “Mild” anger. This is how you cultivate non-hate instead of compassion. It works. I do it. I can tell you it works.

You might still have to deal with this person (at work, for instance) but your entire dynamic with the person will begin to change and you will see results. They will feel the dynamic. The world will feel it. Everything will change. Not overnight but over time. Intensity on this major leak of your energy goes down. And this is a MAJOR leak.

The hardest part is stopping yourself long enough to do the labeling. The “not useful”. But if you can do that you’ll find this technique also comes in handy in other parts of life.

Like where you feel greed or envy towards someone (“not useful”) or where you feel delusional (daydreaming about what you’d do with the billion dollars you’re going to make on the sewing machine you’re going to invent – “Not useful”). This also goes for when you are talking to someone else about the person who makes you upset (angry gossip is “not useful”) or when something bad happens to the person and you think that’s just fine (“approval” of bad things is “not useful”).

Most things in life, in fact, aren’t very useful to think about (“The IMF”, “Greece”, “most politics”, “family I don’t like”, “ex-friends/girlfriends”, etc)

What’s the outcome of all of this if you get good at this labeling? Its as if you’ve been in a horrible accident that ruins the body you spent a lifetime creating. Suddenly you’ve been rebuilt. Everything that was ugly and hideous sheds away. You become beautiful."

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