Ever found yourself inadvertently marching into a mental minefield of negativity?
Imagine that moment when I was mowing the lawn, blissfully unaware until I stepped into a fire ant pile - a surprise attack by automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) is just as jarring. In our latest enlightening conversation, we unpack the insidious nature of these ANTs and the staggering reality that too many of our daily thoughts are not only negative but also repetitive. I share a personal account that connects the physical pain of fire ant bites to the emotional sting of negative self-talk. Together, we explore five actionable strategies to replace the pain with growth, swapping distress for a dose of happier, more constructive thinking.
As we navigate through our mental landscape, the episode also introduces potent tactics to transform those ANTs into allies. You'll hear about the power of labeling and exaggerating these thoughts to their most absurd degree, morphing doubt into the realm of possibility. We delve into harnessing the strength of positive affirmations, and how adopting personal symbols can serve as a constant reminder of our inner superhero. It's about building resilience through repetition, much like the vigilance needed in keeping our gardens ant-free. So, if you're ready to work on cultivating a more robust mental ecosystem and are curious about what a Superman emblem has to do with it, this discussion promises to be both a shield and a weapon in your battle against the swarm of negativity.
Ever found yourself inadvertently marching into a mental minefield of negativity?
Imagine that moment when I was mowing the lawn, blissfully unaware until I stepped into a fire ant pile - a surprise attack by automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) is just as jarring. In our latest enlightening conversation, we unpack the insidious nature of these ANTs and the staggering reality that too many of our daily thoughts are not only negative but also repetitive. I share a personal account that connects the physical pain of fire ant bites to the emotional sting of negative self-talk. Together, we explore five actionable strategies to replace the pain with growth, swapping distress for a dose of happier, more constructive thinking.
As we navigate through our mental landscape, the episode also introduces potent tactics to transform those ANTs into allies. You'll hear about the power of labeling and exaggerating these thoughts to their most absurd degree, morphing doubt into the realm of possibility. We delve into harnessing the strength of positive affirmations, and how adopting personal symbols can serve as a constant reminder of our inner superhero. It's about building resilience through repetition, much like the vigilance needed in keeping our gardens ant-free. So, if you're ready to work on cultivating a more robust mental ecosystem and are curious about what a Superman emblem has to do with it, this discussion promises to be both a shield and a weapon in your battle against the swarm of negativity.
Welcome to the MindBody Project Podcast. After over a decade in the health and wellness industry, erin realized that our bodies change only short-term unless our mindset changes. For long-term success, both our mind and body are forever linked. We are continually building up new ideas and tearing down old ones in our construction zone we call our mind. After this podcast is over, make sure you give it a like and a share and please subscribe and review this podcast. I would now like to introduce you to your host, the man connecting your mind and body to create a limitless life, aaron Degler.
Speaker 2:
Welcome back to the MindBodyProject. Thanks for taking the time to join me today. How many times, if you're like me and you're out mowing the yard, I like to push mow my yard because the ride-along mower, it will leave divots and ruts, and all that in my yard. So around my house I like to push mow because I always think the grass goes. Ah, this is so much better. But sometimes when I'm mowing, especially as the weather gets warmer or after a rain, I'll be mowing, not really paying attention or weed eating, and I'll step in a pile of fire ants and I really won't notice. I just think the ground's kind of squishy and I'll step in and all of a sudden I feel all these bites and I think, oh no, I step in a fire ant. So I'll take off my shoe. I start, you know, wiping them all off and and getting them all off, but it's too late. They've already bit me, because that's what alerted me that they're on me is because they were biting me. And we do that without ever knowing that we stepped in a fire ant until a second or two later when all these are on us and start biting us. And so did you know that even without mowing that we have ants that bite us all day long.
Speaker 2:
What are the ants? Ants stand for automatic negative thoughts. They bite us all day long and we don't realize it until they start stinging. And it's been a little bit. How many thoughts a day do you think we have on average? On average, believe it or not, we have about 60,000 thoughts on average every day. Now, how many of those are repetitive? You're going to be surprised to know that 85 to 90% of those thoughts, of those 60,000 thoughts, are repetitive. Of those 60,000 thoughts, how many are negative? 75 to 80% of those 60,000 thoughts are negative. So that means out of those repetitive thoughts and those thoughts, you only have 20 to 25% that aren't negative, that are positive. And we wonder why we have such issues with negative self-image and lower self-esteem and non-confidence. Because those thoughts that are repetitive, going over and over in our mind, are negative. And that's the ant attack the automatic negative thoughts that happen in our brain with really out, without us even thinking. They just automatically come and we have that thought. And then those automatic negative thoughts, those ants that are attacking us, are repetitive over.
Speaker 2:
It's like I'm mowing the yard and I keep stepping in. The same ant pile, same ant pile, same ant pile. Even though I've been by it a hundred times, I keep stepping in it and they keep attacking me. And what happens? If you've ever been bit by a fire ant, it stings but they leave a little whelp on there, a little sore. That takes days to get better. And the same thing happens with our ants, our automatic negative thoughts. It takes some time to get over. Sometimes we don't realize it's happening and then it stings and then we go. Now it's going to take days to get rid of that.
Speaker 2:
And so today I wanted to talk about. You know, if I'm treating my yard I might put out some ant poison. I have a company that comes that once a year puts out ant, fire ant poison and it takes care of my fire ants all year long. I very rarely anymore have fire ants because they take care of that and it lasts all year long. So every year they come about the same time and put out. So I don't really have to worry about those fire ants each year, each time I go out to mow, because I've done things that have taken care of those fire ants. So we're going to talk about some things today that we can do five ways to stop ant attacks, just like I plan each year for them to come out and put ant poison down and treat my yard so I don't have that problem.
Speaker 2:
We're going to talk about ways that we can treat our mind in anticipation of, or to prevent ant attacks. One is to cut off the negative thoughts, and we might think well, that sounds simple and it sounds hard because when we talk about ants, we're talking about automatic negative thoughts. So how do we cut those off? If they're automatic, we have to be more aware. But the moment that negative thought enters our mind, we cut off by thinking of something happier.
Speaker 2:
What makes you happy? That's different for all of us. It might be a holiday where family's around. For some of us, holidays might be stressful. So that may not be a happy thought. That might be a negative thought. Maybe it's a vacation. Maybe it's a vacation you took as a kid. That just brought back some happy memories. Maybe it's one. Maybe it's a vacation on the beach, maybe it's in the mountains. Maybe it's when one of your children were born. Maybe it's your wedding day, maybe it's just a special moment you had in your life somewhere. Maybe it's just a special childhood memory. Whatever it is, we can, as soon as that negative thought enters, because we reckon we'll know it, we know it. When that negative thought, we can go oh, that's negative, let me think of something happier, whatever that is that makes you happy. You can switch over to that happier thought and then what that does is that interrupts your thought pattern because something's automatic.
Speaker 2:
If we're thinking about a factory line, it's just automatic, it happens. It happens. A number of years ago, before I started personal training, I worked at a factory. It was an assembly line and that assembly line, if you looked at it, thought it's not moving very fast. But when you started working on some of the products on that line, you go man, this line is moving fast and sometimes some of your tools would only reach so far before you ran out of line or to be able to work on that thing. So you'd have to stop the line so you could finish working on that. And what happens when you stop the line? You hold up everybody else's work. But that is a pattern. Interrupt because the pattern was it keeps going. I do my job, the next person does their job, and so on and so forth. But if I had to hit the stop button or somebody else did, they interrupted the pattern. And that's really what we're talking about here. We cut off that negative thought. We hit the stop button and we interrupt that pattern, that automatic line, that automatic negative thought, and we interrupt the pattern with a happier thought of some time that made us happy.
Speaker 2:
The second thing is we label the thought. Well, what do you mean? So as soon as we recognize it's a negative thought, we can label it, such as saying I'm experiencing negative thought. And you know, yes, though, automatic happens without us paying attention. But as we practice this and this is what this takes to be able to stop an ant attack, just like the company that comes out to service my yard, they have to take action, they have to be intentional about servicing my yard, so the same is true with us. To stop an ant attack, those automatic negative thoughts, we have to be intentional about servicing our mind. So we label the thought.
Speaker 2:
As soon as we recognize it's a negative thought, we say, hey, I'm experiencing a negative thought. And when we realize that, when we say that to ourselves, we have to remind ourselves that a thought is just a thought and it only has power over us if we react to it. How many times a lot of those 60,000 thoughts come in and go out, come in and go out. We never give them probably two seconds worth of our time. They're just fleeting and then go on. But if it's a negative thought, sometimes we can get worked up about it, sometimes we can have anxiety about it, sometimes we can have stress about it because we're reacting to that thought. And sometimes, a lot of times, a thought might be something that might happen in the future, has happened in the past, future has happened in the past, but it's currently not happening to us. So when we react to it in the future or react to it in the past, then we're giving it power because we reacted to it, reacted to it in a sad emotion, in an angry emotion. Then it has power because we're reacting to it. So if we label it and say this is a negative thought and it's not going to have power over me because I'm not going to react to it, it's just a thought and I'm going to move it on, so we don't get trapped in that thought, we label it as such. It's a negative thought, I'm going to move it right on out the door so we don't sit with it and we don't have dinner with it, we don't hang out with it, we don't play with it. We say, ah, you're a negative thought. Out the door you go, and it goes on its merry way. So we label it and it moves on. We don't sit with it.
Speaker 2:
The third one is. Third one is and this is kind of an odd one but can be a fun one we exaggerate it to as ridiculous as we can get. I like this show. I think it's on MTV. It's called Ridiculous. I can't even say the word ridiculousness, but it's just, it's kind of like funniest home videos, just really it's pretty much the same thing. But it's just, it's kind of like funniest home videos, just really it's pretty much the same thing. But it's like crazy things that people are caught on camera doing and it's goofy stuff and you know whether it's falling or they hit themselves or it's an animal that does something goofy, but it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2:
So what if we exaggerate our thoughts out into the most craziest ridiculous thing we can? Let's say you're a salesperson and you go, man, I'm not going to make any more sales today. I'm not going to make one. And if we exaggerate that, that's a negative thought. What if we say I'm going to go to this building and I'm going to open the door. And they're going to open the door and they're going to throw a pie in my face? Then, when they throw a pie in my face, they're going to hose me down with a water hose, then they're going to throw confetti on me, then they're going to throw feathers on me, and we keep going until it's so ridiculous. We go that's never going to happen. If we're going to a door to make sales, is anybody going to probably throw a pie in your face. You know, throw confetti on you, spray you down with the water.
Speaker 2:
No, but we take that out to the ridiculousness as ridiculous as we can, and then we finally go that's the goofiest thing, that's not going to happen. So we take it out and we exaggerate it so that negative thought moves on because we've taken it out far enough ago. That's never going to happen. And it changes from oh my gosh, this is so negative, I'm not going to make another dollar. I'm not going to make another sale too. That's the goofiest thing I've ever thought of. And I'm going to knock on this door or go into this business to make this sale, try to pitch a client, and that's not going to happen. So why don't I try? And so we get rid of that negative thought, because we take it out to such the craziness. And so you know, our an attack. How we're going to stop that? We're going to cut off the negative thought, we're going to label the thought, we're going to exaggerate out to the most ridiculous thing we can.
Speaker 2:
And then the fourth thing is we're going to think the exact opposite. So I'm not going to make any sales today. Oh my gosh, I'm going to make so many sales today. I'm going to go to work. If you're a waiter or waitress, I'm going to make so much money today. How many times do you ever go to work and go? I got to go to work. What if you go to work and go? I'm going to make so much money today. It's going to be great. Or I'm going to meet so many new clients today. It's going to be amazing. Instead of going, I'm not going to get any clients today. Or I'm going to meet so many new faces in the checkout line today as I check people's groceries out. It's going to be an amazing day.
Speaker 2:
When we think the opposite, we turn that negative into a positive. Pretty much we're saying I can't do that to, I can do anything. So we think the exact opposite. As soon as that negative thought comes in, we label it as a negative, we don't sit with it, we move it out the door. Or we can say exact opposite Whatever that negative thought is, let's turn it into a positive.
Speaker 2:
And then the fifth thing is we can use affirmations on the negative. What are affirmations? We've all heard of affirmations. They're just simple statements that we repeat to ourselves over and over. That gives us confidence, it inspires us, it gives us better self-esteem. There's my wife made a little Superman emblem. It's on a post-it note and it's on my desk.
Speaker 2:
And so anytime I'm kind of feeling down, or negative to me when I see that, or negative To me when I see that in my mind I'm assuming, assuming taking the Superman pose, which you know Superman, his arms are back, chest is out, cape's flowing and that's his power. I mean, he's powerful, he's strong, he can do anything. So just by, for me that's a positive affirmation. Anytime I'm having a negative thought or a negative moment, I can look at that and that triggers in my mind seeing Superman standing there, chest out, arms, shoulders back, cape flying, being strong and powerful, and that's how that makes me feel, and so that's what I think about when I see that. So for me that is a strong affirmation when anytime I'm having a negative moment or negative time, negative thought, it's also I think it was in the Help, I think the movie the Help, where I think the babysitter was telling the little girl she was saying I am strong, I am beautiful, I am talented.
Speaker 2:
It's I am statements, but I am statements are very powerful because you're assuming and accepting that that's who you are. I am this, I am strong, I am powerful, I am beautiful. I am powerful, I am beautiful, I am talented, and the list can go on and on about the I ams, the I am of your affirmation and it just and whatever, resonates with you. Somebody else might see a Superman emblem in pencil that my wife did for me and it might mean nothing to them, but the moment I see it, whatever kind of time I'm having, whatever kind of thought, I immediately picture shoulders back, chest out, cape flying I am powerful, I am strong, I am capable. All those words come flooding in just by looking in that. But somebody else sees it. They don't get any of that. They just see a Superman symbol and it means nothing.
Speaker 2:
So it has to be things that mean something to you and resonate deeply. So these just like when I have a service come out every year to treat my yard for ants, to prevent ant attacks all year long, fire, ant attacks these five things today can help you prevent ant automatic negative thoughts attacking you and you don't notice them at the moment, but then they bite, they sting and then they hang around for some days. So to stop your attack, we're going to cut off those negative thoughts. We're going to label the thought, we're going to exaggerate to the most ridiculous thing we can, we're going to think the exact opposite and we're going to use affirmations on those negatives. Think the exact opposite and we're going to use affirmations on those negatives and just think about your mind as your yard.
Speaker 2:
All these tools here are you sprinkling all that over the antitacks so that when you step out into a new day, a new situation, whatever it may be, you don't get those little stings that last for days because you've done the work ahead of time to prevent stepping in those mounds of ants that will attack you. I would love to connect with you. You can go to my website, aarondeglercom. We can connect via email, text, many different ways. I have several different programs, from coaching to personal training, to whatever it is you might need to help build up your arsenal against your ant attack, because all those, whether it's physical or mental, go towards helping fight against your ant attack, and I would just love to connect with you. You can go to AaronDeglercom and, as I tell my wife Kim every night before I go to bed, it's bombing on the ninth double A out.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to today's podcast. If you would like to connect with Aaron, you can do so by going to AaronDeglercom or find him on social media as Aaron D degler on Instagram, facebook and YouTube. Once again, we greatly appreciate you tuning in. If you've enjoyed the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. We greatly appreciate that effort and we'll catch you in the next episode of the mindBody Project Podcast.
