Sad? – Stop Identifying With Your “Self”

Being on public display in front of a camera is no easy feat. It’s easy to get wrapped up in others’ opinions of your appearance and take them in as fact because it affects your livelihood.

But it is not fact, and these negative thoughts can eat you alive.

Whether it’s self-inflicted – destructive rhetoric that comes to you through your own insecurities or it’s trolls preying on your weaknesses, all of us by the very nature of being human listen to our brain yapping at us about our shortcomings. We take it as truth even if it’s not… this causes pain and suffering.

Throughout time, eastern philosophy has told us that if we are to find happiness we must find a way to separate ourselves from the trash talking our mind does. Though we cannot prevent thinking bad things about ourselves, they tell us we can recognize that this running commentary is simply noise that we can choose to ignore or embrace.

Is that true or hippy dippy nonsense?

In a fascinating article by The Well, they shed new light on the war between Western and Eastern philosophy championing the latter with new findings based on scientific evidence. Turns out the Eastern peeps probably have it right and we can all take a lesson from them in order to live a better more content life.

“Neuroscience provides evidence that aligns with the Eastern view, revealing that the left hemisphere of the brain constantly creates narratives to interpret reality, leading to a mistaken identification with these self-narratives… 99% of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself – and there isn’t one…”

That means this obnoxious running dialogue that constantly tells you you’re not pretty or handsome enough, that your body is flawed, that you’re never good enough, is just your brain blabbing away. Anything bad (and for that matter good) that your mind is saying to you about yourself is basically nonsense.

In that light, we can choose to listen to the positive which can make us feel better vs. the negative which only hurts us.

Of course, to know this is one thing, to practice it is another.

Intellectually we may understand that telling ourselves we suck is not truth, but emotionally we may still feel like we suck. But, armed with the knowledge that science says our “self” does not exist – we can work on detaching ourselves from it through meditation, positive self-talk, therapy, and more on the quest to be happier humans.

Main photo credit: iStock.com/bestdesigns
Second photo credit: iStock.com/DenisNovikov

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Alyssa Collins hails from Minnesota, where snowy days were the perfect excuse to stay warm inside and write. Over the years, she turned that joy into a career and has authored numerous articles for various publications (under pen names). Email Alyssa via alyssa@ynot.com.