Dr. Amen's ANT's

I reviewed the book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, by Daniel G. Amen, M.D., in my October 24 post. Today I'd like to focus on one of Dr. Amen's ANT's that he mentions in the book. ANT is his acronym for Automatic Negative Thought. We all have them, and we need to learn to talk back to them.

ANT's go by other names, too. Maybe you've heard them called Negative Self-Talk. In the coaching community, I've heard them called "The Itty Bitty Sh%#ty Committee in Your Head." I love that one...it's a bit longer, but equally memorable! :-)

For this post, I'd like to talk about the ANT that Dr. Amen calls "Fortune Telling." I'll use a little fiction here to convey the idea. Let's suppose there's a woman sitting in a coffee shop waiting to meet a guy she's been corresponding with by email for six weeks. He looks normal in his photo, and there have been no red flags in his daily emails. In fact, he seems to be quite funny and bright.

But as she waits for him to arrive, she gets nervous, and she starts into a downward spiral of Fortune Telling.... Maybe he used someone else's photo. Maybe he's a knuckle-dragging neanderthal male chauvinist pig! Maybe he lied about not owning any reptiles. Who knows what else he'll lie about?? Yikes! That scuzzy guy who just walked in must be him! Thank goodness this place has a back door. I'm outta here!

As you can guess, this woman isn't going to meet many men with her negative predictions for the future!

Check in with yourself. Are you harboring negative predictions for the future? Dr. Amen suggests countering the ANT's with thoughts of the opposite. So our fictional friend might try.... Maybe he's even better-looking in person! In six weeks' worth of emails, he always sounded like a good, honest guy. That's why I agreed to meet him here in the first place. Wow! Here he comes now. I'm glad I got up the nerve to do this!

You get the idea.... :-)

As I mentioned in the book review (10/24 post), be sure to check out Dr. Amen's site at http://www.amenclinics.com to see some amazing functional brain scans!

How do YOU keep the Fortune-Telling ANT's at bay? Please stop by the comments section and let us know!

Thanks,
Susan

P.S. 'Looking for some reasonably priced holiday gifts? Contact me at scleaver@dejazzd.com or 610-385-3766 to inquire about my two products, The Whispering Heart: A Guided Journal for Body, Mind, and Spirit, and Food for Thought: Delicious Quotes on the Law of Attraction [gift-boxed in a pastel Chinese take-out box; includes two fortune cookies; NO ANT's! :-) ].

***All of Susan's creative4life posts are copyright of Susan Cleaver.***

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