The way you feel also influences the types of thoughts that can pop into your head, making you more vulnerable to experiencing thoughts that are negative and self-critical.

Emotional freedom and inner peace come from knowing what to do when those negative thoughts and feelings arise, because they will.

As a habit, certain thought patterns arise that we tend to get lost in, overcome by, defined by, even as we resent or fear them. We can retrain our whole mental attitude by first learning to recognize these patterns and perhaps even calmly naming them:

The more negative they are, the more reminders you have about how ugly that way of being really is.

The attempt to suppress unwanted thoughts causes them to emerge into conscious awareness more strongly and more frequently than if they were given attention in the first place.

Practice rational thinking, and often. You shouldn’t trust your mind to think healthfully on autopilot. You have to train it.

You do this by contemplating each thought that makes you feel bad until you can spot its illogic and where it likely came from. Question it, disagree with it, and argue against it like a lawyer’s cross-examination. Little by little, you can loosen the hold it has on you. Once you realize you have been unwittingly programmed, you can coolly observe