I’m always reading or finding something to occupy my thoughts with, so when I gave up looking for my latest book (American Jesus… It’s a great book and I have no freaking clue what happened to it. I hope it reappears one day…) I picked up another. This guy presents a type of “practical psychology” in his book. Yes, I know how weird that sounds, but I think he has a lot of good things to say. One of the more important things is the idea that all of our psychological problems that aren’t chemical related are caused by passivity. Being passive about stresses is what causes all sorts of anxiety and depression in us. His antidote is to stop being passive and start making decisions so that our internal “autopilot” doesn’t get us into trouble. I have quite an intimate relationship with passivity, so I really honed in on this and tried to think about how I could apply it to some of my problems.
Categories
SOme interesting stuff…
Food has always been a thing with me. I’ve never really let myself go, but there have been plenty of times that I have weighed more than I’d like. My usual routine for lunch is to walk over to the mall and see what appeals to me once I get there. Yesterday, I realized that I’ve let my “autopilot” dictate my consumption of food for a long time. I wait for it to tell me what to eat, and guess what? I usually don’t eat well and/or overeat because of it. I stopped and made myself decide what I was going to eat before I got to the food court. I know, sounds like a silly thing, but it was a revelation to me. It lead to me thinking about why I ate things that I knew were bad for me or ate too much knowingly. It was because something in me wanted that food for some reason, probably pleasure. I want, so I get it. That’s a good summation of immaturity. Why should I always get what I want just because it feels good? Would it kill me to be a little hungry later on, or to not eat M&Ms after lunch? Clearly it wouldn’t. After deciding that I wasn’t going to give myself what I wanted, I decided to look at my desire to eat. It’s leading me to some interesting places. The key here is that for once, I realized what I was doing and made a conscious decision about it. It felt pretty good, and I actually feel more in control, I never realized how little control I had over my eating… I think that this book is pretty amazing. It’s only available as an ebook right now, it’s called MindOS (a terrible title) and is available at www.doctorpaul.net. I’m pretty impressed at how he not only explains things, but gives straightforward, simple advice to making yourself better. I’ll post more as things occur to me…
Isaac
2 replies on “SOme interesting stuff…”
That is pretty interesting. I will have to think about that in more detail when I feel better.
I’m still digesting the material (so to speak) but I think it’s pretty good advice. I’m usually pretty leery of self help psychology, but this stuff passes the “sniff test” with flying colors.
Isaac