For those of you that landed here from my Instagram page: @singledadreboot, you are familiar with my “mindset Monday” videos.  Those videos are brief, usually around one minute long.  I’m going to start expanding on the topics of the videos with articles here.  It’s really hard to do more than scratch the surface in one minute.  Hopefully the video will inspire you to think about the topic and spark your interest in researching it more fully.  I’ll provide my thoughts on the topic here.

The most recent video I did on Monday January 27, 2020 covered negative self-talk.  Nothing kills hopes, dreams, and goals more than negative self-talk.  I speak from first-hand experience.  In fact, I’m willing to bet everyone is familiar with it.  That little nagging voice in your head that tells you that you can’t do something.  It tells you that you aren’t smart enough.  You aren’t strong enough.  It tells you that you’ll give up.  It tells you a million other reasons why you can’t or shouldn’t start something.  You have to be very careful because, while that voice, or thought, seems like it is telling the truth, it’s not.  Once it gets ahold though, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if you aren’t aware of it. 

I read somewhere that most people have tens of thousands of thoughts each day.  Of those, 75% are NEGATIVE.  Think about that for a second.  If you have 10,000 thoughts, 7,500 of them are negative!  It’s no wonder that depression is on the rise.  I think that you have a tendency to become what you constantly think about.  If you are constantly thinking about what you can’t do, you’ll never make an effort to do it, and you won’t end up doing whatever that thing is.  If you spend all your time thinking of what you are not, then you’ll never become it. 

To make matters worse, as humans, in 2020, how often are we actually “present” in any given moment?  How often are you fully focusing on the present moment?  How often are you multitasking?  Whether it’s at work, or maybe you are on your phone while talking to your partner, children, or friends?  It’s those moments where you aren’t fully paying attention.  That is when your subconscious takes over and when things can get sticky.

Your subconscious is basically the program in the background that runs everything.  You can think of it like a computer running on Windows or whatever weirdly named operating system version is running your apple macbook.  It smoothly runs everything in the background so well you don’t even notice it.  It allows you to play music on spotify while also surfing the web or writing an article (like I’m doing right now), or whatever multitude of things you are doing all at once.  It works the same way in your brain.  Think about your drive home from work or even when you are walking your dog around the neighborhood.  It’s something you’ve become conditioned to doing, so your brain runs on autopilot.  You don’t really pay attention in those instances, but you still end up where you need to be at the end.

Driving home from work you’re probably thinking about what you are going to do for dinner, whatever stressors popped up that day, how your child did at school, how your partners day was, what will be on your plate at work tomorrow, and on and on and on.  Or maybe you are paying attention to a podcast, audible book, or jamming out to whatever is on the radio.  Your brain just ricochets around those things while you are driving.  It does this while you aren’t really paying attention to driving.  Next thing you know, you are pulling into your driveway or garage.  Your subconscious is what was doing the driving.  Your brain was on autopilot. 

Now think of it from the opposite end.  When you aren’t fully present in the moment or aware of what you are thinking, your subconscious can go the other way.  Maybe you are just starting a big project at work and you immediately think of how hard it will be or how long it will take.  Maybe you possibly even think you won’t succeed.  This could actually fit for any goals or dreams you are currently chasing.  I have bigger goals and dreams I am pursuing.  The bigger they are the more doubts I have.  It’s human nature.  The trick is becoming aware of those negative thoughts so they don’t spiral out of control. 

You can’t solve a problem or make a change to better yourself if you aren’t aware of the problem or issue.  Awareness is key.  I’ve found that the easiest way for me to become aware was to just pay attention to my thoughts.  This isn’t something that I came up with on my own.  I actually pulled it from cognitive behavioral therapy years ago.  To force myself to become aware, whenever I had a negative thought, I would write it down in a notebook.  That’s it.  I wouldn’t analyze it or give it more thought at that particular time.  I would just make a note of it.  It was really hard at first because negative thoughts really can become second nature.  So much so, that you don’t even recognize them.  That’s why this exercise is key for me. 

At the end of the day, I would pull out my notes and take a look at what had been going on in my mind that day.  I was shocked at what I saw.  I couldn’t believe that I was such a negative person.  Some of the thoughts were so meaningless in the grand scheme of things.  I was thinking things like, “That attractive woman didn’t notice me, I must be ugly.”; “I’ll never get in shape.  I just can’t do it.  It’s too much work.”; “I made a mistake on some work that was caught by someone checking it, now everyone is going to think I’m stupid.” And on and on it went.  Sometimes the thoughts were worse, but they were always harsh and self-critical.  It can be even more helpful if you can do all of this the moment it is taking place, but either way, write it down and go through it again at some point.   

The worst part is, looking back at those thoughts, you see that they are merely a perception.  There isn’t really necessarily any truth to those thoughts.  For example, I don’t know that the attractive woman didn’t notice me.  I can’t read her mind.  For all I know, maybe she was thinking the same thing about me.  “That attractive guy didn’t notice me…”.  I don’t even know what is going on in her life.  She could be stressed out over work and life and just wrapped up in her own world.  None of those things have anything to do with me. 

Once you have your thoughts written down for you to see, the next step is questioning them.  Ask yourself, is there evidence that proves this thought correct?  If so, what is it.  Is there evidence that proves this thought incorrect?  If so, what is it.  How was I feeling when I had this thought?  What situation caused me to have this thought?  You really have to dig deep here to get to the root.  The gist of the exercise is to show you that it was just a random thought that really doesn’t have anywhere near the impact that you think it does.  The more you do this, the more you’ll start to see a pattern.  You’ll see things are worse when you’re stressed or having a bad day.  Even if you are hungry or tired.  That seems to be when we are at our weakest.  I guess that is why they say never to make a major decision when you are hungry or tired.

I promise you that if you do this enough, you’ll eventually be able to take stock without writing things down.  You’ll be able to categorize things such as, I’m mindreading or I’m assuming the worst outcome.  The further you go along with that you’ll even start to see that you can actually pull yourself out of that negative thought and thought pattern.  You can pull back, take a deep breath, and interrupt the thoughts all together.  Of course, this doesn’t mean you’ll stop this negative thinking all together but, being able to stay aware and pull yourself out of negativity will make a huge difference in your life. 

To sum things up, awareness is key.  Without being aware, you can’t fix what is going wrong.  Once you are tuned in and aware, just question the hell out of everything negative swirling in your mind.  Ask yourself why that thought is true.  What makes it true?  Eventually you’re going to see that your thoughts are just thoughts that are passing by.  You don’t have to give credence to the negative ones if you don’t want to.  You are in control of everything.