How to Change your Thoughts
Have you paid attention to your thoughts lately?
Are they uplifting and empowering or criticising and harsh?
I don’t know about you but if someone was always yelling negative statements in my ear every second of the day I would find it pretty disempowering!
It is very common to have “automatic negative thoughts” (ANTs) as an initial reaction to a situation. This can be due to past experiences, and unconscious fearful beliefs about ourselves and the world. If left unattended these thoughts become a habit, and you can barely even notice them happening.
Common ways ANT’s turn up as:
Extremist statements - Using ultimatum words “always” “never””everyone””every time”
Mind Reading - Assuming what someone is thinking even if they haven’t told you and you haven’t asked
All or nothing thinking - A tendency to view things at the extremes with no middle ground.
Disaster Predicting - Overthinking that something negative is going to happen
Fortune telling - predicting the outcome of a situation
Emotional reasoning - Taking emotion as fact. Using the way you feel to determine a truth (I feel hopeless, therefore I am hopeless)
Guilting yourself - using “should”, “have to”, “must”
Personalising - Taking responsibility for something that’s not your fault. Thinking
that what people say or do is a reaction to you, or is in some way related to you.
Deflecting - Avoiding responsibility and blaming others for something that is in your influence, refusing to accept that change can happen and you are in control of your response.
Magnification/Minimising - blowing up the importance of negative information and discounting positive information
Your thoughts directly affect how you feel, and in turn, the actions that you do!
Trying to change your habits with automatic negative thoughts is like driving with the handbrake on…uphill.
Just because a thought exists, doesn’t mean it’s true. Especially if it isn’t helping you. You can CHOOSE what thoughts to think, what attitude to have and how you respond to situations. You do not need to let ANT’s pull you down and stop you from achieving your goals!
The power is in practicing rewiring your ANTs with Positive Affirming Thoughts (PAT’s) that are a contrast to the ANT and realistic and doable for you.
Pause and bring awareness to the thought (write it down)
Challenge the thought (am I using a situation from the list above)
Replace it with a PAT (what thought would be helpful?)
This doesn’t mean being positive every second of every day. It is important not to ignore emotions that are affecting you and to express them healthily to move through challenges.
This is about the practise of correcting the habit of always putting yourself down and never giving yourself a chance.
You can make much more progress when you are your own cheerleader!
#bepowherful