This is what i do to some extent like one time i was near some dude at wrk and that lil voice was calling him a bad racial slur like "whattup you ******?!" And i shook my head and mumbled out loud to myself "wtf is wrong with you?" And sometimes ill give myself a slap on the cheek.. I guess laughing it off like u sounds and looks less crazy huh? Lmao..
Interesting thought.. I agree 100% evil and good both live inside us and we need both to identify the other..
I do throw these thoughts out but they seem to come back.. And i dont seem to get a better handle on it.. Maybe i just need to focus more..
What makes this seem like an uphill battle is this:
You decide to be observant of these thoughts and make a conscious effort to disregard them.
Now what happens is you will start to notice those thoughts more often.
Why?
Not because they are showing up more. But because you have made your choice to notice them more. And the better you get at this, the more thoughts you will notice.
So it will seem like you are getting worse because you can find yourself almost drowning in those thoughts in the beginning but in reality you are getting better because you are actually observing those destructive thoughts which normally would just slide right by.
So expect an uptake in whatever thoughts / thought patterns you want to minimize for a good while in the beginning and realize that means progress. Eventually the curve will flatten out and then start heading downwards.
When I say laugh it off, I am not physically laughing it off, just mentally. But this is only how I handle it sometimes. A lot of the time I just let the thoughts pass right through me. Not angry, not upset by the fact that they showed up, just indifferent to them. Letting them pass right through because I don't need them.
You will find your own ways. Another way to do it is to turn a destructive thought on its head.
You simply take that negative bad thought about a person (whatever it may be) and change it to something wonderful and positive about that person.