Monday 4 July 2016

Three ways to change your life

1. Change your experiences
The understanding is that you are what you do; and the idea is that to improve your life by doing different things - doing more things that make you feel better and avoiding things that make you feel worse.

2. Change your consciousness
The understanding is that you are how you think; and the idea is that if you can improve the way you think, then even doing the same things will make you feel better.

3. Change your understanding of life
The understanding is that life needs purpose to have meaning; what needs to be changed are the basic assumptions concerning the purpose and meaning of human life and the world. - how everything fits-together and your personal role. The aim is to reframe reality.

3 comments:

David Balfour said...

Changing ones thinking and content of consciousness, changes ones behaviours, changing ones fundamental core beliefs and assumptions about reality. Sounds like spiritual/non-secular CBT to me?! The analogy goes only so far of course and is framed by totally different assumptions to what is good/bad, right/wrong, etc.

Bruce Charlton said...

@David - That is exactly what it is NOT!

David Balfour said...

I know. That was meant as a joke. I was poking fun at how the secular world tends to reappropriate everything in reductionist terms that fit with its world view. My sense of humour sometimes gets lost in translation and I did not make it clear with my offhand comment. I suspect the best seller 'Spiritual CBT' is not far away from a book shop near you. It may even eventually be endorsed by NICE guidelines, etc.