How to stop feeling miserable, realistically

In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari describes that we live in a world of illusion. The monetary system, ideologies, until religion is a construction of human minds. Without we realize it or not, those illusions profoundly impact our lives.

On that note, it's pretty reasonable to say that our thoughts create our reality.

Our thoughts, whether it's positive or negative are impacting how we live our life. When I lived in a period of depression, my thoughts were so negative. This can't be helped with my upbringing from a broken family. I despised everything, from college, work, and the people around me. Even I would commit suicide. The thoughts went uncorrected for several years until I read a self-therapy technique called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The CBT technique I fond of the most is from David Burn's book, Feeling Good and Feeling Great. He described that depressive thought is not an illness, but it is a distorted thought.

Some of the most common distortions I thought are all or nothing, overgeneralization, or should statement. Realizing this, I tried my best to challenge my own thoughts with the writing exercises from the book. One of the exercises is to jot down our distorted thoughts. The practice is relatively simple, which is like talking to yourself in a way you would say to your friend. The extra addition is to notice your own distortion.

Having practiced the exercise, I realize that my life is not all or nothing. Even if I face unfortunate circumstances, it's not always going to be bad. There were good moments in my life, too. Also, I don't need to overgeneralize that all people are mean. Sometimes people do good things, sometimes bad things. For a depressed person, these thoughts are so illuminating.

From that moment, my thoughts changes. In turn, my perception of reality changes.

When we realize this, it's hard to not notice that we can choose what we want to think. Our beliefs, perceptions, interests, hobbies, even favorite movies are based on our thoughts. About CBT, psychology proves that we can choose the way we want to think.

When we talk about changing our mindset, one might say that it's like a law of attraction kind of thing, isn't it? Well, that's not necessarily the idea. Although, it's up to you if you want or don't want to believe the law of attraction. But I'm not talking about that. It doesn't about attract abundance or manifest money. Because the intention of manifestation is the gain something from external circumstances, and that's not something we need to focus on.

The focus here is the internal factor. It's something we have control over. When we change our thoughts, we change ourselves. From my experience, CBT has helped me to change my attitude to life (However, note that doesn't mean you have to try CBT. You can try something else that you like!). If the change brings abundance or not is not the case here. What matters is there is hope for us to live better and happier. And it starts with our thoughts. We can choose the thoughts that bring happiness to our lives.

In the end, we are all want to be happy, right? However, I'm not saying that we need to delude ourselves or live in denial. When we face the unfortunate moments in our life, just know that there is always hope. Our life is not black and white, not all or nothing. The tides will turn, the hurricane will end.

We can choose to be optimistic when the obstacles come and strive for our lives. Or, we can choose to be pessimistic and let our lives be miserable forever. This might sounds easier said than done, but it's possible. The choice is yours.