In these difficult times, in which we may feel unmotivated and with a constant sense of uncertainty, it is important to change the discourse we give ourselves, choosing to discard the most negative thoughts and seeing the other side of the coin. Have you stopped to look at whether your thoughts are objective and realistic or, on the contrary, do you have a tendency to destroy them? If you’re too picky with yourself, don’t miss the video you can see at the top, where I provide clues so you can steer your mind toward positive ideas.
I can be a perfectionist person, that is, I like to do well what I do, but assuming I can also make mistakes and fail. And when that happens, instead of beating me and giving me the whip non-stop, the convenient thing is to examine what I did wrong and try again.
it is important be tolerant, Assume that we are all wrong at some point and that nothing happens.
Intrusive thoughts VS Rational thoughts
Intrusive thoughts are negative thoughts, ‘the grit nuggets’ of our brain which give us the can constantly and negatively.
These are thoughts that begin little by little, without us knowing at times and that are undermining our morale. The problem is that these thoughts, little by little, are gaining strength and growing. And you realize you have them when they’re already done with you. In addition, they are related to the problems of self-esteem: “I do not serve for this”, “I’m stupid”, “I’m useless”, “I don’t fit in”, “everyone makes fun of me”, “I’m ugly”, “I don’t deserve anything good to happen to me”, “I’m worthless”…
Do you identify with that? What kind of intrusive thoughts tend to come up most often in your day to day life?
When intrusive thinking takes power, rational thinking “takes a vacation”, Stop being present.
But when I tell my rational thinking that “we’re going to work against this, because it’s sinking us and leading us to depression or brutal anxiety attacks,” our rational thinking begins to take power as well. The more we work, the stronger it will be and the easier it will be for it to end up winning the battle over our intrusive thinking.
Here is a specific exercise to work on the above:
–Status: Change of job, to one who has more responsibilities and I like more.
–Emotions I have felt in this situation:anxiety, nervousness and fear.
–Associated thinking:“I’m not good for this job, I’m not able to do it well.”
It is important that stop, think and write it down.
Once you have this done, the next step is to develop a rational, objective, realistic thinking … that adapts to the specific situation.
Generally, intrusive thoughts are not real. They feed back because what they want is to have prominence, but they are not real.
–intrusive thinking: “I’m not good for this job, I’m not able to do well.”
–Objective thinking:
– It’s hard for you to adapt a bit, but well if you focus, you get on with it, you join the partner who offered you help, you do a little research on the subject … you have to get to the same as the rest of your teammates.
– Have you asked the rest of your classmates how much did it cost them to adapt to the job?
– If I have been hired for this position, it’s because I have abilities.
Finally, we must assess the degree of credibility that this new thought, the objective thought, has for us: from 0 to 10, how much have I believed this thought?
It is natural that at first it is hard for us to believe it, because we have given so much power to intrusive thought that it is already believed to be the master and lord of our life. But, little by little, as we take this intrusive, automatic thought … and tell him “no, my rational thinking says the other thing”, intrusive thinking will lose strength and rational thought will gain power.
In this regard, it is important to keep these in mind of the concepts:
1- Do not extrapolate: Not applying a particular situation or something that happened to me once to all similar situations that occur in life.
That is, if one day I don’t do well in an exam, don’t say “I never do well.” Not true! Here we should give voice to our rational thinking to dismantle this false thought. A rational thought in this situation might be “this exam didn’t work out for me, but the ones I’ve done before did.”
2- positive reinforcement: Reinforce yourself positively daily.
For example, if I’m a person who has a hard time going to the gym because I’m lazy and this week I’ve gone one day, I have to reward myself verbally when I leave the gym; “Very good for me that I have already met one of my first goals”.
Just like you crush yourself when you don’t go there, reinforce yourself when you get going.
Do you verbally reinforce yourself?