Yesterday you met your own mind COP by imagining what you mind COP looked like, sounds like, wears…
Maybe one of these?
Today we are going to look at how your mind COP will catch those criminal negative thoughts and keep your mind safe. For the past week you have been keeping a note of your negative mind chatter in your notebook. Now is the time to have a good look at what you have written and start working on making some changes to how that chatter might make you feel bad.
Let’s see mind COP in action.
Catch them: You’ve been catching mind chatter for nearly a week. You should have a pretty good idea of what yours is saying to you and who your criminals are.
Own them: These are your thoughts. You created them. You can acknowledge them. Consider them and choose whether to discard them or whether to arrest them.
Protect yourself: You protect yourself by arresting the negative thoughts, examining the evidence and deciding whether to charge them or give them a warning.
Here’s an example based on the losing your job example negative thoughts we looked at yesterday. Read each thought from left to right to see how Mind COP works.
Catch them
Own them
Protect yourself
‘I should have worked harder’
I did work hard though
Maybe they didn’t really appreciate me?
‘Why didn’t I take that course to learn more’
I did a lot of development in that role
This is a chance to learn something new
‘I’m no good’
Is everything I’ve ever done no good?
I’ve achieved a lot
‘I’m unpopular’
With those that love me?
I matter to the people that matter to me
‘Why me’
I was one of 10
I will find a better fit
‘I’m not clever’
I was the problem solver
I need a new challenge
‘I’ll never get another job’
Have you tried?
I wonder what job I will love?
You can see how Mind COP is examining each thought and looking at it in a different way. One thought does not make a truth. One thought may seek evidence from the subconscious to support it, but Mind COP doesn’t fall for this.
Mind COP is objective and realizes that thoughts tell stories but their alibi is weak when questioned. Mind COP wants to hear from the witnesses and sort out those criminal negative thoughts.
You tell fibs
You see when you tell think a negative thought it’s probably not true and your Mind Cop might make this face!
So the next time those pesky criminal negative thoughts are doing a ‘wrong un’ in your mind, just see them scarper when Mind COP comes along and bangs them to rights.
Your time is precious, don’t waste it
How much of your precious life are you going to spend thinking negatively?
Think about it, how much time are you going to think about negative situations, obsess about the things that went wrong it your life, worry about things that happen or might never happen? Two hours a day? Which is 14 hours a week. Which is 60 hours a month. Which is 730 hours a year. Which is 30 DAYS A YEAR of feeling bad. What could you do in 30 days? A lot! In our example of losing the job, that is 30 days of enjoying the freedom of not working and exploring options for a new career whilst feeling happier.
Life is full of twists and turns, ups and downs and change. By learning to manage your thoughts you will be more resilient in the tough times and happier on the whole. You are not your past, your current situation or what people say about you. You are so much more than that and you can shine.
Write your own table of negative mind chatter in the same format as above and set your mind COP to work
Your mind power is the most powerful thing you own.
In fact so powerful, you even have two! The conscious and the subconscious. The conscious mind helps you operate in the ‘now’ and makes rationale decisions. The subconscious operates at a deeper level and looks to protect us in all we do. You can read more about your two minds here
On Day 2 we started to look at mind chatter. Many of my clients spend more than 50% of their day thinking negatively or hearing negative mind chatter. If you watched sad films for that amount of time, they would probably lower your mood. But the good news is, if you spent the same amount of time watching positive films this would no doubt lift your mood.
Now this isn’t saying you shouldn’t watch sad films or feel negative emotions because we are human beings. We need to feel the whole range of emotions to have a complete human experience. This is about being aware that when a negative thought comes into our mind, it may not be the truth and maybe we shouldn’t spend time dwelling on it or believing it if it makes us feel bad.
Negative thoughts are like criminals in your mind
Say you lost your job. This is a serious life affecting event and can have a huge effect on people. Now say you spent much of your time thinking about:
‘I should have worked harder’
‘Why didn’t I take that course so I would be better’
‘I’m no good’
‘I’m unpopular’
‘Why me’
‘I’m not clever’
‘I’ll never get another job’
These thoughts are like criminals in your mind.
You might spend a few hours a day thinking about these things. These thoughts may run concurrently in your mind and feel like a cloud around your head, stifling you. When your friends and family are talking to you, you might not be listening to what they are saying because you are so wrapped up in what you are thinking. You can’t really read or watch TV properly because you are thinking about the ‘bad stuff’. It starts affecting your sleep. You lose enthusiasm for things you used to enjoy. All because of these thoughts. These thoughts are affecting your enjoyment of life, your relationships and opportunities. You might find it harder to get another job because your self-esteem is low and everything becomes much more difficult.
You need mind COP ne naw ne naw
Mind COP is a good COP. He (or she!) is there, patrolling in your head, looking out for negative thoughts and helping you to; Catch them. Own them. Protect yourself.
Tomorrow I will be showing you mind how COP will protect you against those criminal negative thoughts in your mind. And yes, you really do have the power of arrest (in real life, it’s a citizens arrest ). We will look at how mind COP will help you make arrests and bang the baddies to rights.
Now all this talk about mind COP and criminal negative thoughts is using our imagination. This is the beauty of the mind. It’s imaginative (which is a problem when it creates negative thoughts, phobias and anxiety) but wonderful when it creates excitement, possibility and power.
So let’s imagine mind COP now…. close your eyes (but read this first!). Can you see mind COP? What can you see? Does mind COP have a voice? A uniform? A face? How big is mind COP? How will mind COP help you?
You create your own thoughts you see. With your amazing, powerful, imaginative mind.
Here’s the plan:
Keep noting your mind chatter in your notebook
Read your gratitude list often
Come back tomorrow and I will show you Mind COP in action catching those criminals and keeping your mind safe
Gratitude lists are talked about a lot now. But rarely are we shown how to write a meaningful one that works.
A gratitude list is a powerful thing. If you capture the things that you are grateful for and they have real meaning to you, it can help you build happiness and can be a source of comfort in difficult times.
Have a go right now!
It helps if your list has a good variety of things and you understand why you are grateful for what you have written. A bit like ‘I’m grateful for x because it means ‘y’. You might need a few goes before you get the finished article, but along the way you are thinking in a grateful way and a positive way. This is great because you are looking on the world as a good place. And the even better news is when you look for the good, it lifts you and then you see and feel better. When you have a gratitude list you are happy with, don’t stick it in a cupboard. It’s a living document with a purpose. Stick in somewhere you can see it. Carry a pretty copy on you or in the car. Have it on your phone/computer/hairdryer/xbox.
So what makes a good gratitude list?
Many people find it hard to write a gratitude list. Here are some examples to help you on your way:
Clean water available everywhere I go. Water is the most beneficial drink for my mind and body and quenches my thirst.
For being able to read so I can enjoy stories and information abundantly
For the sun shining on my face and making me feel good
For the rain that cleanses the earth and nourishes the plants and crops
The kindness of people and the kindness they show me
Trees for giving us oxygen
Wind for flying kites and wind farms
My sense of humour for seeing the funny side in most things
My honesty which makes me a trusted person
My baking skills which helps me make lovely things for people
Air for every wonderful breath
Sleep for renewing my body and making me feel rested and ready for the day
Chickens for laying eggs which make many nutritious meals
Colours which light up my life and give me pleasure
Light for bringing different dimensions to all I see
The sea where I can swim, play and fish
Animals for their cuteness, their comedy and their companionship
My wobbly tummy for giving me babies
Teachers of all sorts of lessons which have helped me grow, think differently and exercise in different ways
Music for giving my ears pleasure and firing my emotions
Food for the pleasure it gives and the nourishment it provides
Campfires for their feeling of freedom and wilderness and not forgetting smores
Touch so I feel my loved ones skin and stroke their hair
Freezer for making ice cubes and my kettle for making cups of tea
Yeast for making dough rise for bread
My voice so I can read stories to my children and make people laugh
My ears which let me hear the tone in someone’s voice which tells me how they feel and the waves crashing on the beach
My nose to smell flowers and perfume and also smells to avoid
My courage that gets me through difficult times
If you are stuck at what to put on your gratitude list consider nature, animals, the human body or people.
The highest level of gratitude is the gratitude for existence itself.
A negative can make a positive
You can get things for your gratitude list from negative situations. This is called ‘reframing’. Basically finding the positive in a negative situation. Ebay do it beautifully when they say ‘you’ve won’ the item when you’ve bought it! But ‘winning’ is a feel good word.
You can find gratitude in most ‘life lessons’ for example if you don’t like someone’s behaviour, you can be grateful that you know how to behave better or that you have the freedom to not be around them.
What’s interesting about gratitude is that it is not about comparing yourself to those less fortunate. People often fall into this trap. We will come to comparing to others in a later blog. It won’t make you feel better to have something that someone else doesn’t have. Gratitude is about noticing and being grateful for things yourself.
Here’s the plan
Continue to catch your negative mind chatter – are you noticing a key theme or time it occurs yet?
Continue to acknowledge that when a thought comes in, it may not be true 🙂
Become a mind COP. Catch it, own it, protect yourself.
Do the shake and vac and put the freshness back by making an awesome gratitude list
Work with me
I’m a Hypnotherapist and NLP Master Practitioner that specializes in helping people ‘reset’ in difficult times. We will work through confusion and find confidence and joy in your life. You can email me with any questions or for a free 20 minute consultation. I am on Facebook which I’m very grateful for obvs!
The Dalai Lama has said: ‘The very purpose of life is to seek happiness’.
The dictionary defines happiness in several ways including ‘enjoying or expressing pleasure and contentment’ but also ‘well adapted’. I find the ‘well adapted’ particularly interesting as for a lot of people, maintaining happiness or preventing unhappiness will be a job for life.
Are you an ‘away from’ or a ‘towards’?
People are driven by ‘away from’ and ‘towards’. Some people will find a situation so undesirable (job, relationship, home) that they will actively seek to change it. These people are driven by ‘away from’. The opposite is towards which means people that aspire towards things like a job they would like, a place they would like to live or a type of home or other things they might want in their life. There is no right or wrong, they are simply different drivers in people. It is useful to understand yours.
So when we talk about happiness, you may be an ‘away from’ trying to keep the wolf from the door and stopping yourself being unhappy. Or you may be a ‘towards’ which means you are looking to be happier. Considering that most people would answer ‘yes’ when asked if they want to be happy and 1 in 3 people suffer from depression. I think we can safety say that we need to address both.
Does your mind need a spring clean?
Imagine your mind is like a room that you spend a lot of time in. Do you want it to be dirty, dark, and untidy and have rotting plates of food hanging around? Out of control? Or do you want it to be clean and fresh and nicely decorated. A place of calm and control? If the answer is the latter, let’s look at some ways to give your mind a bit of a spring clean.
We are already monitoring our mind chatter. That’s the pair of muddy boots trying to come into your room!
You don’t want them in your room because they will leave dirt everywhere. So you see them coming in but either leave them outside the door or clean them up! Keep catching that mind chatter, that’s the voice inside your head that may tell you:
‘I’m not good enough’
‘I can’t do this’
‘I’m ugly’
‘Nobody likes me’
‘It won’t work’
You need to become a mind COP. Ne naw ne naw.
CATCH IT – OWN IT – PROTECT YOURSELF
You are catching those negative thoughts, owning them as your thoughts and protecting yourself against feeling bad or sinking into a spiral of negative thinking. Remember that spiral of negative thinking happens when we attach other negative thoughts or memories to the original negative thought.
We will be looking at drivers of happiness in later blogs but for now we are focusing on that wolf at the door because we don’t want to let him in and make our heads a mess.
Here’s the plan:
Continue to catch your negative mind chatter – are you noticing a key theme or time it occurs yet?
Monitor the amount of time you think negatively
Start to acknowledge that when a thought comes in, it may not be true 🙂
Become a mind COP. Catch it, own it, protect yourself.
Oprah Winfrey knows what she is talking about here because we really do ‘own’ our thoughts and attitude.
Our thoughts control our feelings
Let’s explore what Oprah means more…..Our thoughts make us feel good or bad. We control our thoughts. This isn’t about suppressing emotions, it’s about realising that you can invest in negative thinking and feel less happy or invest in positive thinking and feel better. This is why they say that ‘happiness is an inside job’. We will cover this in much more depth as we go through the next 30 days together.
That voice inside your head
Our minds are constantly thinking. Like a running commentary in our head. It reminds me of that film ‘what women want’ with Mel Gibson when he can hear the women’s voices talking as they think (I think there are other films like this too, let me know!). We have this ‘mind chatter’ going on which is not only thinking of the practical things we need to be thinking about, but also talking to us in a negative or positive way.
What is the voice inside your head saying?
Imagine it now, this voice as you go about your day. You get to work, school, shops, whatever and see a friend, you chat and they say, ‘you’re so funny’ and that voice in your head says ‘you’re fun, ha ha, you make people laugh, great’. This creates good feelings for you and makes you feel good about yourself. You call a company about a problem on a bill and it doesn’t go well and the voice says ‘why don’t things go right for me, my life is full of problems’. This creates bad feelings for you and makes you feel worried, stressed and not so good about yourself.
You own your thoughts
When you become more aware of your own ‘mind chatter’, this is the first step to owning your thoughts. Imagine talking to a child or someone you care about in a negative way. Firstly it doesn’t feel nice to do that and secondly it would be horrible for the recipient. This is what you are doing to yourself if you speak to yourself in a negative way. We will work on this.
Here’s the plan
Get your notebook and pen and catch the negative mind chatter going on in your head, make a note of what it is saying. Just a couple of lines a day. Don’t dwell on it, just catch it. After all, it’s probably not true anyway 🙂
* Please read *
Before you start thinking ‘oh no, she’s one of those that tells me to think positive and doesn’t understand what I’ve been through/what I’m up against’. This is so not the case. I help people ease their pain and smooth their thoughts on a regular basis. The work we do over the next 29 days WILL make a difference.
Yes it really is possible to become happier in 30 days. Let me show you how…
So how happy are you already?
Can you give yourself a happiness score out of ten? Not just how you feel today (we all have off days!) but in general. All things considered. Your career, health, confidence, relationships, self-care, finances, goals and dreams. Just make a mental note of that score.
It won’t matter if you are starting from not feeling happy at all or feeling like you are already pretty happy. Over the next 30 days in a daily blog, I will be giving you practical advice and exercises which will make a difference to how you feel.
What makes me an expert?
Because that’s what I do. As a Hypnotherapist (NLP Master Practitioner, Reiki Practitioner and Coach), I make people feel better. I know what it feels like for negative thoughts to creep in. To feel negative about a situation in your life or just feel a bit flat and think ‘why can’t I just be happy?’. I’ve spent the last 5 years training to the highest standard to learn all about how to manage negative thoughts, overwhelm and, well, whatever the opposite of happy is for you. I’ve helped loads of people feel better.
Assumptions about happiness
You see this is an important thing… Unhappiness can be seen as less acceptable if you have a partner, money, job, kids, house, lifestyle that people think you should be happy in. Sometimes there’s an expectation that you need a reason to be unhappy, but this is not the case. Some people have what others would consider to be ‘good lives’ but it doesn’t stop people feeling flat, bored, depressed, unsatisfied. But happiness runs much much deeper than this. Although it’s different for everyone, there are some things you can do to better understand yourself and your thoughts which will make you feel better. Regardless of who you are, what your circumstances are, how much time you have or what your history is.
You have nothing to lose!
So come with me over the next 30 days on a relatively easy and free! journey to explore your thinking and feelings. I promise you at the end of 30 days you will feel better – or your money back lol.
Here’s the plan:
Get yourself a notebook and pen
Read my blogs each day
Dedicate a small amount of time each day to do the exercise
Go with it, even if it sounds a bit odd 🙂
If you like what you read, please like it, comment and share. Sharing and caring for others makes you feel better and helps me know how you are getting on (which I really care about).
You can get things for your gratitude list from negative situations. This is called ‘reframing’. Basically finding the positive in a negative situation. Ebay do it beautifully when they say ‘you’ve won’ the item when you’ve bought it! But ‘winning’ is a feel good word.
