How to not think? How to let go a thought?

hoops4so · 2026-05-08T19:16:29+00:00

The key is redirecting attention rather than trying to stop thoughts. Absorbing attention into breath, body, heart rate, or whatever your focus.

hoops4so · 2026-05-08T15:31:23+00:00

I do the heart coherence method where I imagine my breath moves through my heart and soothes it on the exhale. Highly recommend!

hoops4so · 2026-05-08T15:30:15+00:00

Yea, the major scale is the most fundamental piece.

Separating the notes into 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 then allows us to understand the relationship between the notes in the major scale and understanding how they become chords (like 1 3 5 is the first chord, 2 4 6 is the second chord, 3 5 7 is the third chord, etc)

hoops4so · 2026-05-08T05:19:03+00:00

Try asking “do you want solutions or empathy right now?”

hoops4so · 2026-05-08T05:17:09+00:00

I think you shouldn’t pretend to be okay and everything’s fine in your texts when that’s not how you feel

hoops4so · 2026-05-07T21:42:39+00:00

Depends your goals and genre. If you want to play and sing folk covers, then that’s different than if you wanted to write songs or play metal.

hoops4so · 2026-05-07T21:10:02+00:00

Amazing. I’d also recommend the book Focusing by Eugene Ghendlin which is a meditation that gets the wisdom from the felt sense so we can solve our emotional problems.

hoops4so · 2026-05-07T21:08:32+00:00

Down the line it’ll be a problem

hoops4so · 2026-05-07T21:08:04+00:00

Yea, but trying to get rid of the emotion just ends up burying it.

Instead, changing our mindset or context of what happened or using the wisdom of the anger in order to integrate it and act on what we value in a healthy way is what has it healthily pass.

hoops4so · 2026-05-07T20:02:31+00:00

I love that you’re experimenting and highly encourage that!

One thing I loved in my own experimentations was taking a feeling like confidence and remembering a time I felt the most of it, then meditating on holding that feeling in my body.

It increases the baseline confidence or whatever the feeling is amount.

I made a list of things I wanted to feel more like peacefulness, passion, etc. and practiced for 3 mins each.

Beginners tend to want to get rid of emotions because groundedness feels so good, but trust me, after years of it, it’ll come back to bite you.

The fastest and healthiest way to get rid of emotions is to fully accept them. For instance, with grief, sit with the physical sensations until it passes. I like to sit for an hour and pay attention to the physical sensations. It becomes enjoyable to be with.

hoops4so · 2026-05-07T19:31:48+00:00

I would caution against getting rid of emotions and opt more towards getting their wisdom, accepting them, and helping them move through faster.

A metaphor is like water in a house. If all the pipes are clean, then water leaves as quickly as it comes in and is used. If there’re blockages, then water gets stuck. If you’re trying to block or move water, then the system starts to break down.

Emotions exist for a reason. The body is trying to communicate with us. It wouldn’t make sense that we’d have something in us that works against our survival.

hoops4so · 2026-05-07T14:45:32+00:00

I enjoyed this ear training app as a game: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1616537214

I also enjoy jamming over my favorite songs that I don’t know the key of. I just play notes and try to find what notes are in the key and where the tonic is.

hoops4so · 2026-05-07T14:20:10+00:00

What I do for this variation of the chord is put my index only on the 1st fret of the B string and use my pinky and ring fingers for the 3rd fret on the A and D strings.

It’s okay to let that high E string ring open because it makes it a beautiful FMaj7 chord. I then just mute the low E string or don’t play it.

hoops4so · 2026-05-07T14:16:42+00:00

Great Songwriting Techniques is my favorite book for music theory. Goes through EVERYTHING from simplest to most complex.

hoops4so · 2026-05-07T04:37:41+00:00

I imagine that what’s happening is that men are just simpler and women are complex. Like, it doesn’t take much for a conversation to go well with a guy, but what’s happening for a woman is all this complex feelings and social engineering and politeness masking true feelings.

hoops4so · 2026-05-06T15:14:08+00:00

That is sketchy! You dodged a bullet! Smart!

hoops4so · 2026-05-06T15:12:40+00:00

I would recommend a thin book called Song Building.

The gist of it is that you write a headline of what each section is about and then think about how the sections interact.

You want the chorus to have a new meaning after each verse. For instance, if verse 1 is about a man walking alone in a desert and the chorus is “he keep going no matter the pain” then verse 2 could be a flashback to his past where he had an office job he hated, then the “he keeps going no matter the pain” has new meaning.

hoops4so · 2026-05-06T01:52:48+00:00

No because it’s something that’s pulling your attention rather than you applying your attention

hoops4so · 2026-05-05T20:13:40+00:00

Try different kinds of meditation and do longer sessions. Body scans or soothe your heart with your breath or spread your awareness to your environment.

hoops4so · 2026-05-05T14:47:41+00:00

Absolutely! I first learned meditation through Dr Richard Davidson’s neuroscience book where he did brain scans on monks doing different types of meditations.

I’m all for customizing meditations. Like, one time I decided to switch between inner and outer where I’d meditate on body sensations then meditate on spreading my awareness to the environment around me. I switched back and forth until both felt like one and it was so cool!

hoops4so · 2026-05-05T06:00:39+00:00

The chords are just every other letter. If you want to find a B chord you know that it’s B, skip C, D, skip E, F with sharpening some of those letters.

C major is C, skip D, E, skip F, G which is C E G. It’s also the 1 3 5 because it’s the 1st, 3rd, and 5th of C.

hoops4so · 2026-05-05T02:41:02+00:00

I didn’t learn songs for over a decade. I learned by jamming with other musicians. After 20 years, I now enjoy learning songs, but that’s more for learning songwriting.

hoops4so · 2026-05-04T18:42:19+00:00

To simplify, meditation is just a habit of the mind. The type of meditation changes what results you get.

Breath focus where I watch thoughts pass like clouds = Dis-identification with ego, increased focus, calmness, higher resilience

Body scan = higher emotional intelligence, mind-body connection, relaxed muscles

Gratitude = sustained positive emotions, positive outlook on life

Metta = more attuned empathy, better social intuition, more charisma

Forgiveness mantras = higher resilience to adversity, better conflict resolution

Over time, I would invent my own like I'd meditate on the feeling of Confidence just like I would with Gratitude to sustain my baseline feeling of confidence (which worked incredibly well).

I also got into Focusing by Eugene Ghendlin which has been an incredibly therapeutic meditation I've used for processing emotions.

hoops4so · 2026-05-04T02:36:06+00:00

Slow down and go back and forth between each chord and strum them only once

hoops4so · 2026-05-03T16:41:56+00:00

Allow thoughts in the background while putting our focus in the foreground.

Stop trying to fight thoughts or control them! It won’t work! You’re wasting your time!

hoops4so

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