A helpful thought experiment:
Imagine a huge audience were watching your life on a screen. And they’ve been fully briefed on what you want and don’t want to happen in your life. They know it better than you do.
Not only that, they get to see every single thought you have in subtitles on the screen. One after another after another.
Now imagine they’ve been given a voting device with two buttons.
After each thought you have, they must consider the context of what you want and don’t want in life and then vote whether they think that specific thought you just had was either ‘helpful’ to take you towards what you want, or ‘unhelpful’.
And the aggregate of their votes is projected on a huge dial on the wall. The needle clearly points to the left red side if the audience think it’s unhelpful, and the right green side if helpful. If it’s really helpful, it goes full whack to the 3 o’clock position.
I wonder how often you’re thinking things that keep the needle to the green helpful side?
And how often your needle points left?
Now imagine the audience can pause your life. And offer you a more helpful thought in that moment. One that keeps you focused on doing the right thing in that moment. They need to ensure its something you believe or else you’ll disregard it. But they know there are always plenty more thoughts that you do believe that are simply more helpful than the one you just had.
So they all shout out more helpful thoughts for you for that specific moment: “You’ll make it through this!”, “you’ve done this before!”, “face forwards and keep moving!”, “you can learn how to solve this!”, “this is a temporary set back and things will come together later!” “this person in front of you is under pressure, and they’re trying to pursure their goals just like you – don’t take it personally, try to understand them!”, “ask yourself how you might be able to help this person more!”
You’re bombarded by the energetic helpful crowd yelling out other ideas of things you could be thinking in that moment. And then, you get to pick one above all the others. The one that you’ll go with.
Pick a thought that you believe, and one that makes you feel better or stronger when you think it. It must pump you up and get you to feel and then do the right thing in that moment, all things considered.
The fact is, most of us could spend far more time with the needle in the green than we do, and it would get us to do the things we want to do, in the way we want to do them. It would drive us forwards in life, feeling better, and doing better too.
Now we have an optional tool: we can call upon that audience any time we remember to. I call this whole thing “Helpful Thinking”. We can switch ‘helpful thinking’ on. And we should, as often as we can. It takes a little slowing down, a little practice, a little effort. But when you do it, everything changes for the better.
The next thing then, is to find a way to remind yourself to do so.
One way is to start building the habit. Repetition of an action tends to increase the chances of further repetition. One way to build the habit is to schedule moments (use an alarm) to write down what you’re thinking right now about certain things, check the dial, and when it’s in the red listen to the audience shout out more helpful thoughts. Then choose one for that moment, and repeat it to yourself until you’re back on the right track.
Note: don’t confuse ‘helpful thinking’ with ‘positive thinking’. Positive thinking is not always helpful. (“I’m going to be fine!” is a silly thing to think if you’re lying on the road and a bus is coming). Equally, what some people might say is ‘negative thinking’ can be very helpful indeed. (“This is going to go wrong!” might just get you to pause, and prepare better, so that you can then earn the right to think, “I’ve got this!”) Positive and negative thinking is not a helpful model in my eyes. “Helpful thinking” is helpful thinking!
