Turning ANT's into PAT's

“THE WAY WE COMMUNICATE WITH OTHERS AND WITH OURSELVES ULTIMATELY DETERMINES THE QUALITY OF OUR LIVES.”?

ANTHONY ROBBINS

Last week I posted about journaling and how it can help to clear the clutter in your mind so that you can move through your day with ease and clarity. But what happens when you are going through your normal day, and you have thoughts pop into your head that are negative? You can’t always grab a pen and paper and start writing. So how do you address these Automatic Negative Thoughts or ANT’s as they were originally coined by Aaron T. Beck in the 60’s?

These ANT’s are the deep-rooted messages or tapes we use to limit ourselves and dim our light. By first recognizing the patterns, we can begin to shift them and replace the negative messages with Positive Automatic Thoughts. What I call PAT’s.

If you actively work to cancel the negative thoughts and change the internal dialogue to more positive tones, then you can open a new world of possibilities. Using a technique called ‘stomping the ants’, you can begin to reprogram your mind and change your perception, not only of yourself, but of everyone you interact with. The technique is fairly straightforward. And through a mindful approach, can be easily implemented. You first need to learn to recognize the patterns of the ANT’s that stomp across your mind and emotions every day.

This can be achieved through various mindfulness practices. One is called the mindful pause. This is the simple technique of being aware of your reaction in a given moment, checking in with yourself and listening to the tapes that run through your head. Hear what message is running through your own mind that may be triggering certain feelings.

Take the example of being paid a compliment. How do you respond if someone tells you that your look nice today? Do you immediately think, “Yeah, right. Guess I look awful every other day.” Or if someone compliments how you delivered a presentation, do you deflect and say, “It wasn’t that difficult, or I didn’t do anything special.”

How would it feel to instead acknowledge the compliment, accept the praise, and feel good about it?

Bringing the awareness into your consciousness of these negative messages that are repeated in our head helps us to shift our perspective. This awareness and recognition opens the door to begin to reframe our beliefs about ourselves and others. Once you start reframing your perception of yourself, stomping the ANT’s, you can begin to replace them with PAT’s.

Here are some examples of ANT’s and how to turn them into PAT’s:

Being mindful of our internal dialogue, helps us to better regulate our responses, feel good about ourselves and have more meaningful conversations with our family, friends, and work colleagues.

Start stomping ANT’s and creating PAT’s by listening, observing, and reframing your thoughts. Use your journal to keep track of the ANT’s you identify and how you changed them into PAT’s.

Please share your ANT’s and PAT’s in the comments below.