Stoic Wellbeing - How to Manage Your Mind with Stoicism & CBT

Episode Date: December 5, 2021

Most of our suffering comes from thoughts that we let run wild in our brains. We spend a lot of time each day rehashing different conversations and situations in our mind, and we think that we’re just reviewing facts. But we’re not. We’re reflecting on our own points of view, assuming what others think, worrying about the future, and ruminating about the past.The ancient Stoics understood that our thoughts are nothing more than stories we tell ourselves. And modern mental health professionals agree with them that we should challenge the thoughts that pop into our heads and not automatically accept them as reality. You might be thinking, “That’s impossible. I have a million thoughts running through my mind. It’s not in my control. I’m anxious. I’m overwhelmed.”In today’s episode, I’ll coach you on how to use a thought record to manage your mind so you can live a more resilient, calm, joyful, and compassionate life. I can’t overstate how essential this work is to your wellbeing. If you’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or frustrated that the changes you’re trying to make aren’t sticking, listen to this twice.I've also created a thought record worksheet for you.Full show notes can be found at sarahmikutel.comHello! I'm your host, Sarah Mikutel. But the real question is, who are you? Where are you now and where do you want to be? Can I help you get there?Visit sarahmikutel.com to learn how we can work together to help you achieve more peace, happiness, and positive transformation in your life.Book your Enneagram typing session by going to sarahmikutel.com/typingsessionDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

A lot of us say that we want more meaning in our lives to be part of something greater than ourselves, to feel more connected to other people in the universe. This begins with becoming more connected with who we are and more self-aware of what's unconsciously motivating us. Welcome to Stoic Wellbeing. I'm your host to Sarah Megatel, an American in England who uses Stoicism and other techniques to help my coaching clients become more present, productive, and open-hearted. I am here to help you to visit Stoicwellbeing.com to learn more. Most of our suffering comes from the thoughts that we let run wild in our brains. We spend so much time each day rehashing different conversations and situations in our mind and we think that we are

just reviewing the facts. But we're not. We are reflecting on our own points of view. We are assuming what other people are thinking. We're worrying about the future. We're ruminating about the past. The ancient Stoics understood that our thoughts are nothing more than the stories that we're telling ourselves. And modern mental health professionals agree that we should challenge the thoughts that pop into our heads and not automatically accept them as a fact. Now, you might be thinking, that's impossible. I have a million thoughts running through my head. It's not in my control. I'm anxious. I'm overwhelmed. Well, in today's episode, I'm going to coach you on how to use a thought record to manage your mind so you can live a more resilient, calm, joyful, and compassionate life.

I can't overstate how essential this work is to your well-being if you are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, frustrated, like the changes that you're trying to make happen just aren't sticking. Listen to this episode twice. It's probably the most important one I've done. All right, let's go. What unproductive thought is taking up your brain space right now? Maybe you're thinking, I want to move to Portugal, but I don't know how. I want to start a podcast, but people will judge me. My ex never loved me. My friend is mad at me. I hate speaking in meetings. I'm going to get fired. Epic Tito said that it's not things that upset us, but our opinion about them, meaning that it's not the situation or something that somebody said that's truly bothering us, but what we're making

that mean, it's the stories that we're telling ourselves. It's our thoughts. For example, my friend John and his girlfriend broke up a while ago when I'm changing some names for privacy reasons. And the other day he tells me that he's on the phone with her and he hears a guy's voice at her house. And she said, oh, that's just Brian and referring to their mutual friend. And John, my friend didn't say anything to her about this, but then later to me, he was catastrophizing the situation. Like, I don't think that was really, Brian. Why would she lie to me? If she lied to me about this, that that means that she doesn't respect me and everything about a relationship was an entire lie. And he was really spinning out in this unhelpful way and

creating a lot of drama in his mind. And this quick side note, the Nagram teacher, Suzanne Stabil, coined the phrase chaining, which is what some person. personality types do when one thing goes wrong. So they take that one thing as evidence that everything that had come before it must have been wrong too. Everything is chained together. Just like John thinking, like, oh, this one little thing in my mind like happened. And now I'm making it mean that everything that came before, like our whole relationship was aligned. Rather than just looking realistically at the current situation or instance that you're in. And maybe you've experienced wild thoughts like this after a breakup. Probably we all go a little bit nuts post-relationship,

at least when we're younger and before we've learned to manage our mind. And most people never learn to manage their mind. So you're out of the game here by listening to this. So how do we manage our mind? Because that sounds really hard, right? Well, as you've heard before on this podcast, modern cognitive behavioral therapy is rooted in stoicism. And CBT is the most effective evidence-based psychotherapy that there is. This stuff works, and it's most popular for treating anxiety and depression, but the tools in CBT, again, that's cognitive behavioral therapy, they can be used by anyone who has ever experienced negative emotion, and that's everyone in the world, right? Negative emotions are just a part of the human experience. And the basic concept of CBT

is that it's not things that are happening in the external world around us. It's are truly upsetting us, but our internal impressions of what those things are. And we can actually manage that. Now, that sounds familiar, right? Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, the first form of CBT, he was borrowing directly from Epic Titus nearly 2,000 years later. And Donald Robertson, who you've heard before on this podcast, he has written several really interesting books on stoicism, Stoicism's influence on CBT, and thinks that this idea. actually goes back to Socrates. So we cannot control most things happening in the outside world. We can only control what's happening inside ourselves, our thoughts and our feelings. If you were upset about something,

Epictetus would tell you that it's just a thought. It's not reality. And to engage with the thought in that way by saying just that, you're just a thought, you're not reality. And he thought getting clear on this was the most important work that you could do. Now that sounds simple, right? But a lot of us, I would say most people have a hard time separating, like getting some distance from their thoughts. It's really hard when you are just like kind of spinning up like John was doing about his girlfriend. You just get really into it. So how do you get out of that cycle? Well, one of the most effective ways that we can manage our mind is by creating what is known as a thought record. And a thought record is a CBT exercise that helps us take an objective. look at what's going on in our mind by removing the drama, removing the assumptions, and the ancient Stoics practiced a similar kind of mindfulness as well. And modern like cognitive behavioral therapists would say this is cognitive distancing. So not cognitive dissonance, but cognitive distancing. And in the meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote that nothing is so

conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us. So here's how to create a thought record and I have created a worksheet for you. Go to sarahmictail.com slash thought record and it's really important that you actually do the exercise and make this a regular practice in your life rather than just having it be like a nice cognitive idea in your head. All right. So here's how you do with our record. Clear your mind of all the thoughts running through your brain by writing them out. So journal out everything that is going through. your head, don't center yourself, just get everything out there. What is on your mind? You know, and this could be part of your daily journaling practice. So daily journaling was very important to the Stoics.

And to Marcus Aurelius's meditations is in fact his journal. It wasn't a book he was writing for a public view. It was his thoughts that he was writing down every day. So get all of your thoughts out of your head and then pick one thought to do a thought record on. Something that's been weighing on your mind that you would like help with. And if you find actually that you're sitting in your chair and you're like, what's on my mind? My mind feels like blank right now. Maybe try doing a meditation. Because as soon as you try to meditate, that's when all the thoughts start popping up. And also meditation is like a really, another really important practice to incorporate in your life. And I'll talk more about that another day. But anyway, so you journal out your

thoughts. You pick the one thought that you want to do your thought record on. Now, the first step is Think of an inciting incident or, you know, I hate the word trigger, but like a triggering event. So what's a specific situation in your life that has provoked this particular thought? So, and I'm going to walk you through an example. You want to describe this situation, describe what happened in objective terms without adding in your biases. Now, I could continue with the John example that I gave earlier, but I want to give another. another flavor of different thoughts that run through our mind. So here's the example. So let's say that my friend Kay has not responded to my text and it's been 24 hours. So you can see that I like neutralize this first step, this inciting incident. I'm like taking out any heat. I'm just putting facts. Kay hasn't responded to my text and it's been 24 hours. So what is the thought that is coming up for me for this in this example? Choose one. As I said, like, choose one thought and make it a statement, not a question. So in my example, the thought that's coming up

is K is mad at me. The next step is the emotion. So how does that make me feel? So in this example, mad, the thought that K is mad at me. And I'm thinking like no reason, that's making me mad. And as you can see, as you like process your thoughts like this, you can see how it can become kind of irrational. So I'm going to keep walking through this. So my thought, is that Kay's mad at me. This is making me feel mad. The next step is like, what behavior does that lead to? So how does this thought and feeling influence my actions? This could cause, this could be something like it's making me do something or it's making me not do something. An important note, when you are doing the behavior section of a thought record, you're not

writing down like the behaviors that you wish you would do, like how you wish you would act. You're writing down how you would actually behave when, like in this example, when I'm mad, because I think my friend's mad at me. So in this example, like actions that would come up were like, I'm ruminating about YKs and texting me and making up stories in my head. I'm not texting her back because I'm mad and I'm withdrawing. And the next step in the thought record is we're finding evidence for and against the thought that's come up in our mind. So this is our time to challenge our thoughts. So first step, what evidence do I have to support my thought? The evidence that Kay is mad at me. Well, there's actually no evidence of this. I actually have no idea why she hasn't texted me.

And so there's no evidence that she's mad at me. And now the evidence against my thought, Well, Kay usually takes a long time to respond to text messages, and it doesn't mean anything. She is late to responding to absolutely everyone. Now is a good time for me to check in and see how my thoughts and behaviors aren't serving me at all. So I was thinking that my friend was mad at me when I really didn't have any idea. And this thought was causing a lot of internal drama for me in this example about my friend. And the outcome was that I was mad. This is a good time for me. to step back and think, what do I want out of this situation? What is the objective here? If I want to be close to my friend and that's really important to me, I can see by doing this thought record that my current thought and feeling and like behaviors are doing the exact opposite of the connection that I want. They're putting a wedge between my friend and I, at least in my mind, she has no idea what's going on or that I might be mad. So now's the time when we can come up. up with an alternative thought to the original one that I had. And we'll use the same situation.

Kay has not responded to my text and it's been 24 hours. An alternative thought could be, Kay never responds to my text on time. Now, that seems more neutral, but it's not giving me the feeling I want. And I'm just using this as an example for you because it's important that when you are trying to practice like a more helpful thought that it gives you the feeling that you want. So I'm thinking, Kay never responds to my text on time. Now I'm feeling, I'm still feeling irritated. So that's my emotion, irritation. And my behavior resulting in that could be, I'm stewing in resentment, that Kay is not a more responsive friend. And maybe this is just like a fleeting thought in my mind. But the emotion that is tied to it can stick and keep me in a mood. And the outcome is increased anger.

and maybe Kay is a fantastic friend and super generous in so many ways, and this one little thing is needling me. But if I haven't told her that it bothers me when it takes her days to respond to a text, well, then how is she supposed to know? In her mind, maybe average response times could be several days and who is to say that I am right and she is wrong. Okay. So I wanted to give you an example of maybe an alternative thought that couldn't, that didn't work for me. And that thought was that K never responds to my text on time. So that wasn't the right one. It kept me in a thought and a feeling that I didn't want. And it's important to point out that stoicism isn't just about regulating negative emotions and fostering positive ones. It's about making you see that the thoughts

causing these feelings are just impressions and not facts. We can choose to accept or reject our thoughts. And when we accept them, the Stoics would say that we are assenting to that. them. Okay, so let's try one more alternative thought. Same inciting incident. Kay has not responded to my text and it's been 24 hours. All right, I am going to think about this. I'm not going to have an immediate reaction. I'm just going to like pause and think about like what could be going on in Kay's life, right? So a thought that I could be coming up with is Kay has a lot going on in her life right now. What emotion does that bring up for me? Compassion. And what actions or behaviors are a result of compassion? I feel motivated to reach out to her and see if everything is okay. And this curiosity and

concern is coming from a genuine place. And the outcome is that I want to help Kay. So as you can see, all three of these records that we went through had the same inciting incident. that Kay has not responded to my text and it's been 24 hours. Two of them left me feeling bad and and like angry and distancing myself from my friend in my mind. And the third one, same incident, but the outcome was that I want to reach out to my friend because connection is important to me and I want to make sure that she's okay. Thoughts cause our feelings good and bad. When we let thoughts control us, they can harm us. But when we control them, we can transform ourselves. And this benefits everyone around us. The Stoics believe that human beings are by nature rational creatures.

And you might be thinking, what? Everyone around me seems pretty irrational, including myself. But consider this. We are born in essence as our highest selves, but we lose this as we acclimate to the world. We put up defenses to protect ourselves, and we slide into unconsciously. patterns of thinking and feeling that color our worldview and how we behave. The Stoics were right that we have the capability for reason and common sense, but they understood that people act irrationally all the time, but it's our potential that they were after. We get stuck in the trappings of our personalities, and we stop seeing our potential, and we feel like things can't change, but underneath everything, that essence of who you are still exists and anything is possible.

Once you wake up to your autopilot nature, it's like a mask comes off and you can start exploring how to think, feel, and act in a way that feels more true to you. The first step in this positive change is to get curious about how you think and feel and act. And you can do this through the thought record practice that we talked about today. Now, most people listening to this will think thought records are a good idea, but they're not actually going to do the exercise. We love to learn new things and then move on without acting on what we learn. And I do this myself. It's like an easy habit to fall into. We say we don't have the time. I'm too busy. I'll do that eventually. But then we'll lose hours of sleep picking apart something that our boss said. We won't go for

that promotion. We'll go someone instead of having an uncomfortable conversation. managing our mind is the most important thing that we can do. And when we don't, our relationships suffer at home and at work and we stay stuck in the same place. Again, go to sarahmicatel.com slash thought record to get your worksheet so you can start practicing managing your mind yourself. I'm so fascinated by all of this and I'm taking several courses on the neuroscience of change because I want to continue developing as a person and I want to help you do this as well. Pistoics said that we should live with Arate, that is live with excellence, to live as our highest selves, not just for ourselves individuals, but for the people around us and the world at large.

During our lifetimes, we might not return. Well, we probably won't return to that pure essence that we were born with. But aiming to get closer to that is the most important work that we can do. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I create. created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.