Like many others here on HN, I lean more towards the “intellectual” and “analytical” side of thinking. I was not very mindful of my emotions and how they influenced my thinking.
The thing about thinking is that our analytical minds rationalise our thoughts and hence our conclusions _feel_ rational. But what we don’t see easily is that our emotions define the axioms on which our rationalisations are based. That’s why negative thinking feels so “rational” and hard to get out of. If you don’t see this, you won’t see a point of coming out of it.
I went for a 10 day vipassana retreat and I have been practicising the meditation every day since February 2021. Through the meditation, I was able to finally perceive how much anxiety my mind was filled with in every moment. The anxiety produced all manner of irrational negative thoughts, which I used to believe in. With the meditation practice, I finally could “experience” the anxiety by “intercepting” it. Instead of letting it loose and producing all manner of thoughts, I “uncover” the anxiety and spend time with it. It rises up and tries to cause a mess while I let my breathing take its natural course, and slowly it fades away into oblivion. What is left behind is clear skies in my mind, and an insight that anxiety is just something that comes and goes. If not observed, it subtly creates a mess. If observed, it speaks its truth and goes away.
My negative thinking has not gone away completely, but this was a game changing insight for me. The fact that my thoughts are the equivalent of a madman’s rambling, and don’t need to be taken seriously, is very freeing.