This is the BBC World Service. I'm Sana Safi and welcome to World of Wisdom.

This pandemic has turned so many people's lives upside down. And even when it hasn't,

a great many of us have found ourselves rethinking our priorities.

This is a place where we explore some of those deep personal issues which are often

the most important questions in our lives. Judy is from Thailand but lives away from her

family in Japan. She wrote to us to say she was being troubled by what she called negative thoughts.

We set up a conversation for her with our advisor Gary Zoukov, author of the Universal Human.

It was a long, lovely moving conversation recorded across different time zones, with a world

of wisdom team in the UK, Judy in Japan and Gary in the USA. You will hear that it was an

emotional experience for Judy. As with all our recordings, we had to edit it down considerably

for this broadcast. Here she is with her question. Sometimes I attack by negative thoughts,

now I'm living in another country. My sister, she has to take care of my mom as she

getting all day. And also I change a lot of jobs. So I don't have a concrete career path and I

don't know what I should do or I can do. I feel like I'm negative and sometimes I attack by my fear

and I don't know what to do next. How do I let go of my negative thoughts?

Well that's quite a question.

Judy, you said that you're attacked by negative thoughts.

Yes, always. Are you open to looking at these questions from a new perspective?

Yes, I'm looking for a new perspective. Yes.

Okay, because from my perspective, negative thoughts are not outside of you. They're not

something that is an enemy or an adversary. When you have negative thoughts, judgmental thoughts

of other people or yourself, those thoughts and the emotions that come with them and they're

...