A New Year, A New You?
Welcome to 2020!
Rumor has it we were supposed to have flying cars by now but I am still waiting for my invitation to order one. Oh all the new age technology they thought back in the 50's and 60's we would have by now, everything would be done by robots. Well that hasn’t happened but sometimes it does feel like we are moving about the world in a robotic fashion now that everyone has cell phones. We don't have to go grocery shopping and we even have "digital assistants" to turn on our lights and lock our doors.
So it can be easy to walk through our lives mindlessly and then realize in December that we haven't even accomplished one of our 2019 "New Years Resolutions" and then we beat ourselves up over it. So what's my mind-blowing fancy therapist answer to this problem? STOP.MAKING.NEW.YEARS.RESOLUTIONS.
Seriously, hear me out. Depending on who you ask and what comes up in your web browser search, many of us make New Years Resolutions, but only a small percentage implement them and an even smaller percentage of people actually accomplish their resolution. For the majority who fall short, we beat ourselves up over it, affirming our inability to succeed, labeling ourselves as failures like we thought and leading us to feelings of depression. Then comes the days leading up to the new year or after and we're feeling re-energized due to positive inspiring social media posts and are bombarded by ad's for gyms that promise to help you reach all your goals this year so we get sucked back into this endless cycle. Rinse and repeat!
How can we break this cycle? What if we were to commit to challenging JUST ONE negative automatic thought we have about ourselves a day? That's it, ONE! You can do it between hitting snooze on the alarm clock, you can do it in the shower, you can do it on your ride to work, you can do it while you drink your morning coffee... you can literally do it anywhere and anytime.
Not sure how to do this. It's pretty simple. Start by asking yourself these questions:
1) What is the evidence to support this thought? Do I even have any?
2) Where did this thought come from?
3) Is there evidence for the contrary?
4) Is this thought helpful?
5) Is there another way to look at it?
Just challenge the validity of your thought. That's it. Just once a day. I dare you to see what happens. And if after 30 days of this you still feel like I'm full of it, let me know.
Happy New Year!
If you want to learn more about challenging negative thoughts contact me at Colleen@scatteredpotential.com, subscribe to my blog or my newsletter by filling out the form below. Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.