Inside the Thought Machine: Page 23

There is a common theme with this book. The theme is the same as it is with all of my books, which is that first, there needs to be a truth of self and self-discovery. Secondly, and especially when discussing personal or transformational change, improvement or calculating the thought machine; we bring our understanding back to us. We keep this person centered to adjust our thoughts appropriately to fit our needs and personal understanding.

My internal windings and the gears to my thought machine are unique to my system of thinking. Perhaps there are those who will relate and maybe there are people whose machines will run the same way. But no two machines run exactly alike. We are all unique.
There are those who feel similarly but we live in different places and we do different things. We have different intentions and intuitions. However, there is a universal truth and there are applicable ways that people can use the same tactics and strategies to help regulate their habits and habitual thinking. 

There are self-help programs which are famous for offering the suggestion, “Look to relate. Not to compare.” There are people who look and judge or rationalize and they’ll say, “Well, that’s not me.” Or they’ll argue, “I would never do anything like that,” or they’ll say, “That would never happen to me!” Meanwhile, in their race to avoid fault, the similarities are right there in plain sight.

There was a person who suggested to me, “Take what you need and forget about the rest,” when I was in this position. I was told, “If it don’t apply then let it fly,” is good advice but, in fairness, there were times when my habits sought to argue instead of adapt or change. Perhaps I didn’t truly understand this at first. Maybe I was too guarded. Or, maybe I didn’t want to relate or be humble or vulnerable and admit that I needed help.
Meanwhile, I am a full believer that this is life and no one gets out of this alive. No one goes through life untouched, without scarring, or without pain or damage. No one is so balanced that they are untouchable or healed from the common tragedies that we all see on a daily basis. Life happens to everybody. Period. End of sentence . . .

There are people, gurus and speakers who I’ve seen and thought about their life. I wondered if they were so impervious that the quandaries of the mind did not affect or impose upon them. But wait, regardless of whether someone else is affected or unaffected, the one truth is that my thought machine is the one that needs my focus. Thinking about others and their relations to emotion does not help me. I might find encouragement. I might find inspiration but I have to learn to implement and understand ways to improve myself first.
I can learn from others. I can benefit from the experience of people who went through similar things but in the case of my thought machine, I have to keep my system personally-based. Put simply, I have to keep the focus on myself.

I have placed this thought in other publications. However, I will place this again here because my analogy of being a person with learning disabilities is fitting. I had to find ways to understand information; additionally, I had to find ways to make life relatable to accommodate my mental fitness.
In my case, I had to find ways to both understand and retain information. I had to figure out ways to understand lessons, which is why I use analogy based lessons to help me build an understanding.
I needed to find something that I could use as a basis of comparison. This way, I could turn new information into understandable habits. In my case, I am more of a visual learner. I look to use simple tactics and tie them into complicated subjects to create a better understanding. 

In fact, I have given explanations of emotional challenges and depressive thinking from sixth grade classrooms, to middle school auditoriums, in high school gymnasiums and in college lectures. I have created presentations for people in corporate settings who found themselves perplexed by my simple approach; yet, at the end, I tie the basics of my subjects together to provide an easier level of understanding. 

Another suggestion that was given to me when l was looking to understand my thoughts and sanity was this: Keep it simple. By far, we complicate too much and at the same time, we simplify too little. We dramatize and personalize. We think emotionally and as a result, we react emotionally.
In some of my presentations where I found attendees and private clients fit with overly nervous routines.

I offer the reminder that nervous thinking leads to nervous reactions, which leads to nervous results. Now, of course, this makes sense. And so does another popular truth, which is that no one ever calms down just because they were told to calm down. More often, no one stops worrying because a person comes along and says, “Don’t worry about it.”

So then what do we do?

The need to understand and be comfortable is common; however, the way we adjust and find our comforts are unique to our system of learning. This is why I offer my information as truth to me. I offer my guidelines as a means to simplify understanding. While I say this is simple, as simple as this might seem to me, my way might be complicated to someone else. 

We all have our own ideas. We all have our own DNA. We have our own fingerprints, which means we are all perfectly unique individuals. We should be treated this way. There is no one size fits all in the world of mental health. There is no one-way routine that answers everyones question.
No, the truth is mental fitness is the same as physical fitness. This means to stay fit, we have to keep ourselves fit.
We need a plan. We need an idea. We need something that makes sense to us. Even if the way we choose doesn’t make sense to anyone else, we need to find our best potential to be our best possible self. 

The decisions we have to make could be obvious but the execution can lead us to intimidation. I suppose this is why people write books on self-help. This is what worked for them. But me, I am not looking to recreate the wheel by any means. My best idea is to use what we have and find ways for us to spin our wheels in the best way possible. Looking elsewhere or wondering if life is easier for other people doesn’t seem to honor our best interests. So, let’s “Keep it simple,” as they say and see what works for us.