If a happy life is your aim, say goodbye to these 10 self-destructive thoughts

Do You Have These Thoughts?

A woman with short blonde hair and blue eyes smiles brightly, looking off to the side. She rests her chin on her hand. The background is softly blurred, suggesting an outdoor setting with some greenery. She is wearing a light-colored shirt.

Have you ever been going about your day when suddenly a thought so out of left field and hurtful jumps your brain then runs, leaving you bewildered and unsure of something you’d previously thought ironclad?

Or perhaps you have wondered what life would be like without you? Or you were hypercritical of something that had absolutely nothing to do with you?

Usually we think debilitating thoughts of this nature are the domain of artists, the unhappy, or the depressed, when the truth is we all have what can be called “Ants” (automatic negative thoughts), “Aunts” (automatic unnecessary thoughts), and OWs (obviously wrong assessments).

They simply strike so fast and with such frequency that we’ve accepted them as life’s usual background noise without realizing how harmful these small, scurrying mental infestations are to our sense of self.

Let’s take pen and paper and check off how many we’ve been influenced by.

1. I’m Not Good Enough

A woman with short brown hair sits on a colorful striped blanket, resting her head on her hand while gazing off to the side. She appears contemplative or possibly concerned. Behind her, there is a window with closed blinds and some potted plants on the windowsill.

The Supreme Leader of them all. Who hasn’t measured where they want to be against where others are and come up with “I’m not good enough” as the sole reason for non-matching accomplishments?

This pernicious bit of poison serves to give us permission to stop trying and thereby avoid the specter of failure. It is Satan’s whispering voice in the desert, ever ready to be carried by our mental winds.

Less poetically, it is the lizard brain in us playing with our fight or flight response. It tells us to run from our own shadows. But if we’re doing that, aren’t we also running toward what we think is a source of light; one which actually only blinds us? I say take “I’m not good enough” and turn it into “I can learn more.”

2. No One Likes Me

A man with short dark hair and a beard is sitting in a gym, wearing a black athletic shirt, and looking at his smartphone. He has earphones in his ears and appears focused or contemplative. The gym equipment and a large air conditioning unit are visible in the background.

This one’s lightning fast; so quick it’s usually only detectable by how we compensate for it rather than its actual strike. We might go a bit overboard in trying to be helpful, or even the reverse and become uncooperative. Keep an eye out for this one. It likes to sneak up when the interpersonal ego feels slighted.

3. This Is Pointless

A woman with red hair is lying on a gray sofa, holding a remote control. She is wearing a white t-shirt, black jeans, and white sneakers. Her legs are propped up on the armrest. The room is bright with large windows in the background.

As in life. As in the universe. As in everything. But here’s the thing, sunshine, YOU are ALIVE right NOW. That kinda makes you a god of all your things. Use that power for good.

4. I’m Never Going To…

A person with short brown hair and a trimmed beard gazes pensively into the distance while seated indoors. They are wearing a dark-colored shirt. The background is blurred, focusing attention on the contemplative expression on their face.

Get married. Be rich enough to buy an island. Date Rosario Dawson. Write a bestseller. Have David Beckham’s body. Make a decent lemon meringue pie. Never going to reach one of a shifting mass of goals, large or small.

But there’s never actually a reason behind this, is there? Just a nebulous footstamp and pout. Have a bit of patience with yourself, luvs. Know what? You might, you might not, but odds edge clearly into the Not if your primary cheering team (you) is telling you to give up and go have a beer.

5. I Always…

A woman with a thoughtful expression gazes out of a window, partially covered by venetian blinds. She has her hands near her chin and is wearing a blue striped shirt and earrings. The room is softly lit with natural light filtering through the blinds.

The conjoined twin of I’m Never. Absolutes are the worst seeds we can plant in our heads, serving only to drive us deeper into whatever quicksand a moment of time flung us into. “I always screw things up,” usually tops the list of I Always. You’re probably less a screw-up than the current presidents of most countries. That counts for something.

6. I’m A Terrible Person

A woman with long brown hair sits on a couch, holding a yellow mug in her hand. She gazes thoughtfully out of a window with a pensive expression. She is wearing a grey sweater with white stripes on the sleeves. The background shows a brick wall and large window panes.

Really? Are you? Bodies in your basement, food withheld from a hungry child? You are likely so far removed from terrible that we’d have to give FedEx extra time to deliver this message to you.

Granted, you’re not perfect; you slouch, you eat the last cookie, you stopped caring about pop culture a long time ago… but you’re hardly terrible. So why think it? Ah, because you think you’re being judged for some small failure to uplift another person (or the entire human race).

Guess what? You get to say no, you get to disagree, you even get to disappoint: you’re human, and anyone holding you to a higher standard than that is using you.

7. Wishing Ill On Others

An elderly woman with short curly white hair is seated and gazing thoughtfully into the distance. She rests her chin on her hands, which are clasped together. She is wearing a striped white and navy blue shirt. The background is softly blurred, suggesting an indoor setting.

People annoy us. A lot. Often. And part of having the lizard brain is having this tiny little Zeus tucked under our skulls who gets to throw lightning bolts. Zeus, however, is better suited to seducing people as a goose, which is entirely another kind of problem (well done if you get that nod to Greek mythology).

We’ve all hoped the driver who cut us off takes an immediate wrong turn off a cliff; we’ve all imagined a supervisor or two inexplicably crushed by filing cabinets; I have personally had fantasies of running through my neighborhood with a phaser dematerializing loud neighbors at will.

These thoughts come, these thoughts go, usually unremembered a few minutes after an offense has passed. Don’t worry about them… unless you begin to cackle and hunch. Nothing good comes from cackling and hunching.

8. I Hate…

A young woman with blonde hair in a ponytail is sitting at a café table. She is holding a fork and is about to eat a slice of cheesecake on a white plate. There's a cup of coffee with a napkin next to her plate. The background shows a blurred view of buildings.

Hate’s a word that overrides reason to the extent that we do dangerous, harmful things to others in order to cover our fears. Examined, most of us will find we don’t hate at all, we get annoyed, kind of like the Zeus thing but flung about more frivolously. Don’t you just hate that?

9. I’m A Failure

A man wearing a beige t-shirt and jeans is sitting on a dark blue couch with pillows, holding a remote control and staring straight ahead with a neutral or slightly displeased expression. The background is plain beige.

At what specifically? See, this one likes to cocoon itself in a thick ball of generalities so as not to get truly examined. Failure at what? How do you, personally, define failure? This is an extremely important definition to consider; your entire outlook on life will likely flow from it.

Also, did you truly want whatever you reached for and missed? “Forever conditioned to believe that we can’t live here and be happy with less,” sang Sting in the song “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free.” Consider that. Free yourself.

10. Life Sucks

A young woman with short blonde hair and a burgundy top gazes out of a window with a contemplative expression. The background shows a blurred view of greenery and a balcony railing.

Otherwise known as the Security Blanket of Woe. This thought pops up everywhere. Not just your life, but life itself. Does life suck? It does. But it also unsucks. Quite a lot. Probably way more often than any of us will allow ourselves the opportunity to notice.

But this is the thought that every single one of us entertains from time to time. It zips in, lowers our serotonin levels, and zips out, which leaves us open to invasion by all the other destructive thoughts.

The thing is, however, that if life truly sucked, none of us would be wisdom seekers, thrill seekers, journey takers, bemused bystanders, or lantern bearers for others along the way. Life’s an amalgam of lightning-fast impulses colliding with bits of reality every day. We create life with our thoughts and they can be truly wicked sometimes, truly detrimental. It’s a big world of whizzing thought-highways, so let’s be careful out there.

Finally…

A man with short dark hair and a beard, wearing a blue sweater, rests his head on his hand while sitting on a white sofa. He appears deep in thought, with a window and a green plant visible in the background.

These examples are different from clinically diagnosed, anxiety-based intrusive thoughts, which can have a higher and more immediate negative impact on a person’s daily life. These are the thoughts we all think from time to time, most of the time never bothering to examine them, but the unexamined life is a type of living doom, one full of automatic negative thoughts.

Nobody wants ANTS. You’ll find, though, that identifying these thoughts as what they are (ants, aunts and ows) proves extremely beneficial. A little exterminating from time to time yields surprisingly lasting results.