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Writer's pictureDr K. G. D. Mawji BM MSc.

It's not good to be thinking in absolute terms, black & white, yes & no.

Updated: May 12, 2020


Are you an 'Absolutist thinker'...researchers say NO NO, absolutely NOT good for your mental and physical health. Why? (read time=7 minutes , average)

“The cosmos is the sum total of everything — pretty big. It's hard to wrap your mind around the cosmos, as it extends far beyond the Milky Way, or far-off galaxies, or even our own universe.” It has laws. Holding it around each other, changing it and reshaping it. That’s how our brains works, pretty much.

The brain has a capacity to hold our body systems and ‘you’ together. – a simplistic view perhaps. The brain also has laws and when they are broken the whole system breaks along with ‘you’. The laws of 5(6) senses and they must all be aligned for us to function with balanced mind-body. So what happens when our brain experience derangement.

That’s what we want to check out here. Why and how can we fix it in this brief synopsis.

So, a happy person who is adjusted is not yes or no, black or white, totally rigid and unmovable from his ways, thoughts, opinions and fixated with ideas. Is he the one who applies the rules and obligations so rigidly that when it comes to facing outside stress and different demands that they become a broken-down person? Are they ‘Absolutist thinking’?

The brain thinks in patterns, from the beginning, – recognition and categorisations that’s the way we understand our environment and perhaps also shape our selves. Humans seek the simplest and least effortful ways of thinking. So we take a short route through our enrion to exist and behave. I hazard an opinion that this may be the roots that sprouts biases and prejudices and becoming our daily views and habits.

To be so hard wired, rigid, immovable comes at a cost, we pay by being recluse, we display avoidance behaviour, self-blame, we question self-worth, we question our need to be in this world, display obsessive ritualistic behaviours and we appear down and/or anxious to others around.

Have you noticed anyone who uses ‘me’, ‘myself’, and ‘I” often?

So, thinking in absolute terms and of black or white, yes and no or me, myself and I and nobody else, are denying themselves the opportunity to take advantages afforded by this vast and beautiful universe we exsit in. The brain has all the capacity to change and refresh.

It’s not the harshness and unforgiveness of this world, but the way we interpret its effects that we become unable to cope or make appropriate decision to remain happy.

Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi is a postgraduate student in psychology at the University of Reading in the UK, quoted “The Stoic philosopher (and former slave) Epictetus opined that ‘men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them’. A sentiment that is totally, completely and absolutely correct.” I am swayed to agree.


Next up soon: How do we change for better or do we need to?

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