Search results
Aug 4, 2024 · Sharing too much can sometimes leave us vulnerable or misunderstood. So, it’s important to know what to share and what to keep under wraps. In this article, I’ll reveal the 10 things you should always keep to yourself, as backed by psychology. Let’s get started. 1) Your Personal Goals. Setting goals is a crucial part of our lives.
- Lachlan Brown
- Overview
- Rewriting the script
- Digging deeper
- 5 steps to track your thoughts
- What tracking my thoughts taught me
It’s like I get to rewind the negative tape playing in my head. I get to rescript the narrator of my life.
I make an effort to be kind. I try to remember to pause and intentionally reflect on my words and actions, asking myself whether they’re of benefit to others.
In general, this practice helps me to respond rather than react in everyday situations. If nothing else, it helps me be just a little bit nicer.
This means that instead of getting upset when I’m on hold with the credit card company, for instance, I can take pause and remind myself that the person on the other end is just there to do their job.
Rather than an obstacle to what I want, I can see that person as a three-dimensional human being.
And it means that when someone cuts me off in traffic, I can remind myself that I don’t know what other people are going through.
I first became fully aware of the automatic negative thought (ANT) phenomenon when my therapist made a friendly suggestion to begin writing down my thoughts. Just take a little notebook everywhere, she suggested, and see what comes up. So I did.
It wasn’t pretty.
It quickly became obvious that 75 percent of my thoughts were criticisms of myself or my behavior. The rest were somewhere on the spectrum of what train I had to catch, thinking about how chocolate sounds really good right now, daydreams about the future, or making plans for my Saturday.
I realized that there’s some interesting weather going on in the biosphere of my head.
The next step my therapist had me take, after I came back with my notebook full of ANTs, was to write responses to each and every one.
Every time I had an ANT in my day, I wrote it down and immediately wrote a rebuttal.
There’s an even more in-depth version of the ANT exercise called cognitive distortions. This version uses labels like “catastrophizing,” “all-or-nothing thinking,” and “diminishing the positive” to categorize each thought.
Using these labels helps you identify what kind of thought you’re having and see clearly that it isn’t connected to reality.
When I’m feeling down or upset and that emotional lens is coloring my thinking, I can identify that my thoughts are actually influenced by emotional reasoning, one of the cognitive distortion categories.
For example, if I believed I did badly in a presentation, I might feel that all of my work for the rest of the week was sub-par.
Yet after receiving positive feedback from my manager come Monday, I could see that my opinion of my work was being shaped by emotional reasoning. I felt I had performed poorly, so assumed that it must be the truth — when in fact it wasn’t.
Identifying thought patterns helps me to see that I can’t change what’s happening, so there’s no use stressing over it.
If you want to track your thoughts, all you’ll need is a notebook and pen. You can also track your thoughts on a spreadsheet if you’re the techy type.
You’ll want to record several factors to make the most of the exercise:
1.What’s the time of day?
2.What triggered the thought? An experience, location, behavior, or person?
3.How did the thought make you feel? Rate the intensity from 1–5.
4.What kind of cognitive distortion is the thought? You can find a complete list here.
The greatest benefit I got from tracking my thoughts was the realization that I don’t have to passively accept everything I think. I can challenge my own thoughts, assumptions, and habitual ways of thinking.
Instead of thinking a negative thought and taking it as fact, I can pause and decide whether I choose to validate that thought. This is seriously empowering, because it means that I am in charge of my own reality.
“The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.”
— Robin Sharma
Our mind is a great tool that can be extremely useful. It helps us make important decisions, contains the seeds of creativity, and allows us to engage in countless complex tasks on an everyday basis.
But when the mind runs the show, it can really be a downer. Thought tracking helps me take my mind off autopilot and get in the driver’s seat of my thinking.
- Crystal Hoshaw
- Use Mind Mapping to Make Sense of Complex Thoughts. Mind mapping is effective as a study tool, improving critical thinking skills, clarifying and organizing ideas, and increasing focus.
- Find the Connections Between Your Thoughts. Complex thoughts will always have connections to each other. It’s just a matter of paying attention to patterns and points of similarity.
- Create a Sticky Notes Wall to Organize Moving Pieces. Sticky notes are an excellent thought-organizing tool because they help your ideas become more tangible.
- Use Expressive Writing to Improve Mental Health and Improve Work Performance. Whether you’re organizing your thoughts around work or personal life, take time for expressive writing.
Sep 7, 2022 · Long term, you can learn to maintain control of your thoughts by eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, meditating, and reframing your thoughts in a positive light. To learn more from our Counselor co-author, like how to be aware of the things that trigger your bad thoughts, keep reading!
- 333.2K
- Schedule specific times of day to clean and set a timer. Leave the environment if possible or engage in another activity afterward. Consider gettin...
- Consider making a routine for sleep at least 2 hours before bed as this will help calm the mind and make it easier to fall asleep. Shut off electro...
- Try to focus on problems that are within your control. For example: you can't control the rain, but you can control whether you take an umbrella an...
Nov 21, 2023 · Positive thinking: Stop negative self-talk to reduce stress. Positive thinking helps with stress management and can even improve your health. Practice overcoming negative self-talk with examples provided. By Mayo Clinic Staff. Is your glass half-empty or half-full?
- Positive thinking doesn't mean that you keep your head in the sand and ignore life's less pleasant situations. Positive thinking just means that yo...
- Researchers continue to explore the effects of positive thinking and optimism on health. Health benefits that positive thinking may provide include...
- Not sure if your self-talk is positive or negative? Some common forms of negative self-talk include: 1. Filtering. You magnify the negative aspects...
- You can learn to turn negative thinking into positive thinking. The process is simple, but it does take time and practice — you're creating a new h...
- If you tend to have a negative outlook, don't expect to become an optimist overnight. But with practice, eventually your self-talk will contain les...
Aug 9, 2024 · “Thought stopping” is a commonly taught approach for helping prevent recurring negative thoughts or interrupt them before they spiral out of control (Hardy & Oliver, 2014). In this article, we review therapeutic perspectives along with several powerful thought-stopping techniques for managing repetitive thoughts and blocking ones that are harmful.
Mar 6, 2018 · Sticking up for yourself is no easy task. But there are concrete skills you can use to hone your assertiveness and advocate for yourself.
