#mentalloops

“For the rest of the day, try to "catch" your negative mind loops as they happen. Watch for signs of mental "pain" or friction, which are a good indicator of thought processes that need debugging. Debug each negative thought loop down to its root problem, using one of the three techniques:

- The Five Whys: Ask "Why?" five times

- Worst Case Scenario: What's the worst thing that could happen?

- Third Person Perspective: What would you say if you were hearing this from someone else?

At the end of the day, write down each of the "root problems" you uncovered on your practice sheet, preferably using the METAL method.”*

*see earlier posts for techniques mentioned above.

“These habitual thoughts control our emotions, our behaviors, and ultimately our lives. Because they are deeply embedded, the product of years of experience and upbringing, these loops can be hard to track down. The best way of debugging these negative loops is to look at the quality of your life, more specifically for areas of pain. For example:

• Difficulty in relationships

• Difficulty at work

• Difficulty with family members

• Legal trouble

• Money trouble

• Health trouble

• Persistent negative beliefs ("I'll never succeed", "people are untrustworthy")

• Persistent negative feelings (cynicism, hopelessness, despair)

• Persistent failure

• Anxiety

• Depression

• Addiction

• Living in your parents' basement (or worse yet, your parents' car)”

“Just as it's hard to believe that loops of code can build an immersive videogame, it's hard to believe that our thoughts, our behavior, and even our lives could be built through loops.

Once you begin to observe your mind closely, however, you'll find these mental loops control just about everything you do.

Your loops create your thoughts.

Your thoughts create your actions.

Your actions create your life.

Therefore, the quality of our loops determine the quality of our lives.

Fix your loops,

Fix your life.

This is great news: it means that even though many of our loops may be invisible to us, there is one simple way to find them, and that is by looking at the quality of our lives.

Similarly, if our mental loops are reasonably well-designed, our life works. We are successful at work, play, relationships, money, and love. Successful does not mean perfect; it simply means that our lives have a minimum of friction “a minimum of pain. Where there's pain (outward pain, such as a series of failed jobs or relationships, or inward pain, such as depression or anxiety), there's usually a faulty loop. In fact, pain is an excellent indicator that we need to examine our loops.”