Ever struggle with negative self-talk? We all do.
Here’s an idea to help.
Next door to our home is a churchyard and our border is completely overgrown with bushes, trees, brambles and nettles. It’s a wonderful barrier and hosts birds and all sorts of wildlife which excites the family especially my daughter.
However, it encroaches over the border regularly as no one in the church ever keeps it trimmed, so each year I hop over and trim it right back using my chainsaw, strimmer and cutters.
The first time I did it, in 2002, the job lasted all month and it was exhausting.
The following year it was much easier as a pathway had been created the previous year. It took a weekend.
The third time, easier still as the pathway had become established.
Work with me on this as it’s a really useful metaphor for handling your negative self-talk.
The fourth year even easier and so on until now I just need to trim back the year’s growth and only need my strimmer to do the job. Last month it took me just a couple of hours.
The reason it’s easier is that a pathway has been laid several times.
The same goes with our thinking. Everytime a thought is made in our brains a neuro pathway is created, which helps us to make the thought again. The more times we create the same thought, the quicker it is to have that thought again.
So for positive thoughts, the trick is to create the pathway by thinking of them regularly and they’ll appear more often. That’s good, but what happens if it’s negative. And we do have 14 more negative thoughts to every 1 good thought.
The trick is to recognise the trigger that creates the negative thought and to block the pathway to the negative thought and instead lay a second path to a positive thought. Do this regularly and you’ll lay a pathway to a positive thought everytime a negative one looms.
And you’ll emulate my churchyard growth.
Thank god for church yards that’s what I say.
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