This week, I want to introduce you to kind of a friend that’s going to help reduce your stress levels.
So who is this friend?
Well, as it turns out, you already know them very, very well but I’m going to get to the introduction in just a moment.
First off, let’s define what stress is.
Well, stress is a feeling, right? It’s an energy state.
We can have positive stress where we’re a little bit nervous but we’re energized and excited. And our energy and excitement overcomes our nervousness when going to go tackle a challenge.
And then we’ve got that negative stress where we have fear and doubt and uncertainty and worry. And we generally just feel exhausted and kind of rotten.
So how do we get into either of those states? Generally we talk ourselves into it, right?
And the thoughts that we think are what lead us to feel the way we feel because we’re interpreting events around us.
And we can interpret them in a positive way or we can interpret them in a negative way, which leads us to feel stressed out.
So imagine this: Imagine you’re able to take a transcription of all your thoughts that race through your head all day. And you could categorize them as generally positive thoughts or generally negative.
If you were to look at your whole transcription of all your thoughts for a day, what percentage would be positive and which percent would be negative?
When I ask, people kind of chuckle and look away and say, “Yeah, probably more negative, higher percentage negative than positive.”
And I’ve asked that question a lot of times.
And so I find most people have a more of a negative thought process about themselves.
So, how do we get rid of this?
Well, here’s where I’m going to make the introduction.
I want to introduce you to You, your thoughts.
I would like you to embody your thoughts as a separate person, standing there, telling you all the negative stuff that you’re thinking about yourself.
Now, how long would you put up with this person telling you all kinds of negative stuff? Probably not very long, right?
So why do we put up with it from ourselves?
We don’t have to.
So this is just a bit of awareness. If we can catch ourselves being negative, imagine it as somebody else, and see how ridiculous it is to listen to that. Maybe that’ll give us the awareness to not continue to be negative towards ourselves.
It’s one of those things where it might sound a little bit silly, but it’s an effective strategy to get the awareness of when you’re being negative so you can catch it.
When you started feeling stressed out about something, just imagine it’s somebody else telling you to be stressed out.
Would you want to be around that person?
Or would you rather be around someone that says, “Hey, take a breath. You got this, you can do it. You can get the resources you need. You can get through this, you can figure it out. You’re smart enough, you’re capable enough.”
And all those things that are probably a lot more true about you than the negative stuff you might be telling yourself.
I hope you and your new best friend have a great week, and you get the awareness around when you’re being negative so that you can shift your thinking and be a little more positive and supportive for yourself.
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