Yet, in their mundane lives, people often are stuck with ants of a different sort, the behavioral and mental negativities which constitute the negative mind.
ANT is an acronym coined by Doctor Daniel G. Amen in his book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. It stands for automatic negative thinking.
Such thinking is evidence of an overactive deep limbic system, which lies in the centre of the brain. The deep limbic system consists of the thalamic structures, and hypothalamus, and the immediate surrounding structures.
Functions of The Deep Limbic System
- sets the emotional tone of the mind
- filters external events through internal states (creates emotional cooling)
- tags events as internally important
- stores highly charged emotional memories
- modulates motivation
- controls appetite and sleep cycles
- promotes bonding
- directly processes the sense of smell
- modulates libido
- "Always/never" thinking: thinking in words like always, never, no one, everyone, every time, everything. If you catch yourself thinking these absolutes, stop and think of examples that disprove your all-or-nothing attitude.
- Focusing on the negative: seeing only the bad in a situation. The purpose of finding the positive in your life is to give your life more balance and optimism to a world you too often consider negative.
- Fortune-telling: predicting the worst possible outcome to a situation. Remind yourself that if you could see the future, you'd be a lottery millionaire by now.
- Mind-reading: believing that you know what others are thinking, even though they haven't told you. When there are things you don't understand, ask about them to clarify them. Avoid mind-reading at all costs because of their infectious nature.
- Thinking with your feelings (emotional reasoning): believing negative feelings without ever questioning them. Whenever you have a strong negative feeling, check it out. Look for the evidence behind the feeling. Do you have real reasons for feeling that way? Or are your feelings based on events or things form the past? What is true, and what is just a feeling?
- Guilt beating: thinking in words like should, must, ought, or have to. It's better to replace "guilt beatings" with phrases like "I want to do..." So, in the above examples, it'd be more helpful to change those phrases to "I want to live my life the way I want", "I want to act in a way that is positive", "I want you to treat me better", and "I want us to get this done". Guilt isn't productive. Get rid of this unnecessary emotional turbulence that holds you back from achieving the goals you want.
- Labelling: attaching a negative label to yourself or to someone else. Negative labels are very harmful, because whenever you call yourself or someone else a jerk or arrogant, you lump that person in your mind with all of the "jerks" or "arrogant people" that you've ever known and you become unable to deal with him reasonably as a unique individual. Avoid negative labels.
- Personalizing: investing innocuous events with personal meaning. There are many other reasons for others' behavior besides the negative explanations a dysfunctional limbic system picks out. E.g. the supervisor may not have called because he found other coworkers to work a shift, lack of sites to people, or called in sick. Since you'll never fully know why people do what they do, it is best not to personalize the behavior of others.
- Blaming: blaming someone else for your own problems. Whenever you blame someone else for the problems in your life, you become powerless to change anything. The "blame game" hurts your personal sense of power. Stay away from blaming thoughts. You have to take personal responsibility for your problems before you can hope to change them.
Don't believe anything you hear &mdash especially in your mind!
You can do whatever you set your mind to do. Just remember to hang around positive people.
By taking personal responsibility for your problems, you are owning the right to a better life for yourself.
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