When a thought causes suffering, see if it holds up under scrutiny. Very few consternation-causing-cognitive-constructions can survive honest investigation. That’s because most of the thoughts that you think are based on notions that aren’t real. You can’t know what others think of you, what their motives are or what will show up in the next moment. What you can do, is notice the tendency, if you have one, to torture yourself over hypotheticals. When you catch yourself experiencing this kind of self-induced suffering, notice that it’s your thought that actually makes you feel that way and then…
Drop it.
