Give it a thumb
Kill the ANTs!
The truly destructive ANTs invade and eat away at your mind. They are also known as Automatic Negative Thoughts. There are many different kinds of ANT species, or ways your thoughts can distort incoming information to make you feel bad.
For example, here are four ANT species:
- Mind reading: predicting you know that another person is thinking something negative about you without them telling you. A negative look from someone else may mean nothing more than he or she is constipated. You don't know. You can't read minds.
- Fortune telling: predicting a bad outcome to a situation before it has occurred. Your mind makes happen what it sees. Unconsciously, predicting failure will often cause failure. For example, if you say, "I know I will fail the test," then you will likely fail the test.
- Always or never thinking: this is where you think in words like always, never, every time, or everyone. These thoughts are overgeneralizations, which can alter behavior.
- Guilt beatings: being overrun by thoughts of "I should have done... I'm bad because…. I must do better at… I have to…). Guilt is powerful at making us feel bad. It is a lousy motivator of behavior.
The thoughts that go through your mind, moment by moment, have a significant impact on that three pounds of jelly, called your brain. Happy, hopeful thoughts have an overall calming effect, while negative thoughts inflame brain areas, which are often involved with depression and anxiety.
You do not need to believe every thought that goes through your head. Look at your thoughts and then let go of your thoughts, holding on to the positive thought a little bit longer. If you never release your thoughts, or you "believe them", as if they were true. ANTs can take over and infest your brain. Develop an internal anteater to hunt down and devour the negative thoughts that can ruin your life.
It is, of course, your choice. You can choose to think good thoughts and feel good or you can choose to think bad thoughts and feel lousy. You can train your thoughts to be positive and hopeful or you can allow them to be negative and upset you. You can learn how to change your thoughts and optimize your brain. You can also learn the skill of 'not thinking'.
Accepted and repeated negative thought can easily become a belief, as can accepted and repeated positive thoughts. These beliefs, either positive or negative, create your daily reality, which is your choice, also.