Practical Mental Tools - The Ignore List
One of the most frequent mental disturbances that affect productivity,focus and mental peace, is getting affected by external factors like what others are doing,what others have achieved ,how well others are doing and what you have accomplished vs where others have.
These mental habits are the core of inferiority complex and they affect confidence and general self esteem. These habits and reactions become deep seated and corrosive.
The mind somehow clings to the habits and starts liking to indulge in self loathing and rationalizing the behavior as if the fact has to be immediately dealt with and to be responded to (ie the Joneses do have more $$ than I do and how am to going I deal with that fact ?).
The mind tricks itself as thinking that responding to these external facts is necessary to maintain self esteem. A mental dialog could go on like this — “ok,so he has become the VP(or has greater net worth etc),what have you done so far ?” ,”your counter point is not strong enough and is just an excuse ” , “what are you doing to do about it and do you think you can match up ?“ ,and so on. These mental processes lead to a sinking feeling in your stomach, raises your heart rate and just plain makes you feel uneasy.
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These thought patterns go by different names like envy ,jealousy. Humans have accepted these patterns as deep wired and that one just has to to accept them.So how do you deal with such negative thought warps ?
This is where the IGNORE List comes in.
To start with it,label the set of internal ‘feelings’,reactions as ‘jealousy’. Experience a few times how jealousy really is — watch your internal happenings both physical & mental.Just go through your usual internal painful process of dealing with them.
Once you recognize jealousy, next time try to not deal with it.Just watch that whole ‘mishmash’ of internal ‘things’ and just let them flow.If you start feeding it ,self arguing with it,it becomes more powerful and starts sapping your mental energy.
Usually jealousy catches you off guard and does it real fast. The moment you read or hear some news, it immediately takes over.
So, just be alert & recognize that call from the jealousy thought machine and add it to your mental IGNORE list. Just dont feed that thought machine. You dont need to respond to it. By not responding to it,you are the one in control.It will taunt you with arguments about you not being able ,smart ,rich etc. It will make these arguments via other actors (eg with image of your rival asking your ability and other more venomous forms to elicit your reaction).If you engage with this thought machine, then you are caught in the warp.
The key is be silent and detach yourself. YOU ARE THE ACTOR,not that thought machine. JUST IGNORE the response,not the presence of this thought pattern. It will pester you for a while and fade away.
Instead of being scared of this thought machine ,look forward to meeting it again.
