The Mind

What stands between us and reality are our beliefs - our interpretations of what happens to us, and the meaning we ascribe to it. It is these beliefs, not what happens, that determine how we feel and what choices we make. The significance of thinking is so great that one of the main branches of psychotherapy, cognitive psychotherapy, bases treatment on critically examining unconscious beliefs and replacing them with others more in line with reality. Healing through a change in thinking has nothing to do with the widespread belief in the power of positive thinking as a means of achieving desires and even views it as one of the most distorting contact with the unpleasant part of the truth and things that are not in our control. There is a significant difference between the thought, "If I believe strongly, it will turn out the way I want it to," and the attitude, "I am aware that the outcome may not be the way I want it to, but I will give it my best shot." Optimism is not positivity, but contact with reality that does not at the same time rob us of our hope that we will be able to cope and derive strength and meaning even from things over which we have no control and that do not happen the way we want them to.