(Not assuming our thoughts, emotions, and stories woven from them are necessarily true just because their ours!)
One common way we put ourselves in prison is to believe, unquestioning, that the thoughts we have, and the emotions we feel, along with the heroic storylines we weave from them, must be necessarily true, because they are ours.
The indicated basic wisdom practice is to cultivate an active curiosity to doubt when we see that we are obviously suffering in a prison possibly of our own making.
Byron Katie has developed a simple, yet elegant protocol to interrupt these stories, which she calls “The Work.” It consists of several steps which I paraphrase here.
#1: Identify a situation where you are suffering and ask yourself, “What am I assuming in this situation to be true?”
# 2: Then ask, “Can I be 100% certain it is even true?” Often our fears and anxieties are unsupported by the data. Be sure to check the facts.
# 3: How do I feel when I assume my thoughts or emotions, or the story I am running in my mind is true? This is usually the easiest step. We feel shitty.
# 4: The next is a biggie. Who might I be if I were to set aside this idea, or belief, or story based on my emotions? Invariably we feel free and elated, because we have just emerged from prison.
# 5: The Reverse. Finally, we ask ourselves, “Is there a high probability that the very opposite could be true?” And often, I have found, if I return to the facts and ardently pursue the search for truth, the very opposite proves to be the case, at least more than 50% of the times I have cared to look.
One Step Further
I find it interesting to seize the moment and fan this ember of truth, by stretching one step further, spinning a new life-affirming storyline, based on the facts, of possibility and hope, with gratitude to be free at last, emboldened to move outward and upward.