There are some times in life when a particular thought or an experience just doesn’t leave your mind. The more you try not thinking about it, the more it becomes certain and intrusive in your daily life. The entire effort of getting rid of it just doesn’t work and in this entire scenario all you end up becoming is less confident, exhausted, and more so depressed.
Relating this type of situation to a Passion driven thinking is not correct. A passionate individual makes more deliberate decisions based on her/his interests while an obsessive individual is hooked with unwanted thoughts and non-deliberate decisions. Thus, this thin difference is pervasive in nature.
But all that said, as per experts, having unwanted thoughts is not entirely avoidable and wrong. In fact it is absolutely normal to have them. A very generic analogy of a situation a lot of people encounter with is about checking the gas stove multiple times before leaving home. Such an encounter is normal and in fact it has evolutionary roots where in some 300,000 years back, this extra attention would ensure that there are no predators around. This hyper sensitivity is part of us and more so the unwanted thoughts such as: hurting someone we love the most, sexual thoughts at times when we require to focus the most are normal situations.
Yet, checking the stove once or twice is normal but checking the stove almost every hour could be a scenario of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). A quite dramatic situation, but a person suffering OCD is simply having recurring thoughts and is not able to deal with them no matter what come may. While professional help is always available from the doctors and may seem the correct route, below is a very simple list of pointers to deal with thoughts/experiences before they become OCD.
- Let it pop up: how about letting that particular thought/experience pop out and you just seem to waive at it. The point here is actually figuring out what is normal and not normal for you.
- A friend: sharing your unwanted thought/experience with a friend can be very fruitful as well. As per experts, a trusted friend’s opinion can help demystify this intrusiveness.
- Look in to the face: face your fear on its face right there. There is nothing better than dealing with that unwanted and proving it to be shallow. After all, when you face with rigor, a win is more determined and confirmed.
- Meditation: meditation of sometime every day helps. The whole idea with this is not to become a saint but to simply practice and collect all your attention at one place so that the movement of wild horses of unwanted thoughts become mild and in control. And a daily practice of meditation does help, almost conclusively.
There is a lot more to intrusive and obsessive thinking than what is mentioned here. But there are some scenarios in life we can actually directly deal with by speaking with them, fighting with them, and shrugging them. More or less unwanted thoughts and experiences come from people and such people in life come and go. Not every person you spend some time with is worth clinging along in your life. There are people who will time-to-time derail you no matter how much of benefit or human you have been to them; but there are also people who understand the whole aura of humanity and are there to stand along with you and motivate you.
Let experiences go by facing them and grow stronger with the each passing one, for time does not stop for anybody. You have to decide for yourself whether you want to stick with them giving them unnecessary importance and waste your precious time or grow impressively blossomed: achieving things in life which really mean to you or rather define you.
