Post by Susan Peabody on May 20, 2023 19:54:38 GMT -8
Positive Thinking
Susan Peabody
Excerpts from The Art of Changing
Change Your Mind, Change Your Life
Most changes begin in the mind with a decision. You decide to think or behave differently. This changes your attitude, which changes your feelings, which changes your life. It is the proverbial ripple effect.
I had a friend who hated the holidays. Every year he complained bitterly. I said nothing. Then one year he had a revelation. He realized that he hated the holidays out of habit. His childhood had been difficult, and the holidays were not a happy time. Now he was grown and there was nothing to be unhappy about. He realized he had options, so he decided to live in the moment and see if there was anything to enjoy. To his surprise, he found a lot to be happy about. What happened to him? He just changed his mind.
Affirmations
Some people criticize themselves repeatedly for doing the wrong thing, hoping this will change them. This rarely helps. Instead, it fosters shame and brings only short-term changes, not a long-term transformation. Affirmations are more constructive.
An affirmation is set of chosen words designed to help you change your thinking patterns, then your feelings, and then your behavior. You memorize affirmations and, if all goes well, they help you change. Affirmations can be short and soothing, like “God loves me,” or they can be a statement designed to help change your behavior, such as “Today I am going to be enthusiastic and be nice to everyone I meet. Today I am going to make a difference in someone’s life.” Affirmations help you remember the things that will transform you.
I use affirmations all the time. A few years ago, I used them to deal with my tendency to perceive rejection where it did not exist. This was an old habit of mine. It always came up when I asked people to help me. When they said they were unavailable, my mind always translated this as “They do not care about me; they’re selfish; they’re rejecting me.” Then I felt either hurt or angry. Rarely did I try to look at the situation from their point of view. I was always ready to project my history of abandonment onto anyone who didn’t follow my internal script, which was “If I ask for help, drop whatever you’re doing and rescue me. Otherwise, you don’t care.”
Eventually this caught up with me. I had a friend named Karen, and one day I asked her to meet me for lunch to discuss my latest crisis. She said she was busy. At first, I accepted this. Then I ran into her in a shopping mall, and I got upset. My internal dialogue went like this: “How can she have time to shop and not help me? I guess she doesn’t care. She’s just selfish.” Then I immediately felt abandoned. This was quickly followed by both anger and sadness.
I went home after this and sent Karen an email telling her how I felt. That seemed like an honest, straightforward way to communicate my feelings. I refused to acknowledge to myself that my words had a tone of accusation because I was angry. Well, she had her view of things<\#209>which she promptly shared with me. “You are so needy,” she said. Of course, I got defensive, and we traded emails for the next few days<\#209>each of us expressing our point of view. I’ll spare you the details, but things fell apart after this, and Karen didn’t want to see me anymore.
I was distraught after the relationship ended and began to rethink the whole episode after talking to my therapist. Finally, I decided that all of this happened because of my hypersensitivity and tendency to perceive abandonment where it didn’t exist. When I brought this up with a friend, who knows my history, she suggested several reasons for my neurosis. Right in the middle of her well-intentioned remarks, I said, “This is all very interesting, but I already <I>know<I> most of what we were discussing. I want to move to the next level. I want to do something about it. I want to change.” My friend smiled and said, “Let’s make a list of affirmations.” “Do those really work?” I asked. “Well, let’s give it a try,” she said.
Over the next few hours, we came up with the following list.
When People Are Unavailable
No one is purposely trying to abandon or reject me, and I can choose to remember this.
I don’t need to be a hostage taker. I can honor somebody’s saying “I am not available.”
How other people spend their time is none of my business, and I will not judge their choices.
“No” is a complete sentence. I do not have to change people’s minds.
I have enough people in my life that even if someone isn’t available to me I’m ok. I have God, other people, and meetings.
My serenity is not dependent on any one person’s availability. I can be serene even if no one is there to help me.
These affirmations worked for me. I read them every day and internalized them. Then, the next time someone was too busy to help me, I felt less abandoned than before. As a result, I didn’t react so quickly and act out. Instead, I waited and talked to some friends. Then, what little abandonment I did feel dissipated, and I was able to look at things more clearly. For me, this was a great victory. I had changed.