Are 9 Species Of ANTs Keeping You From Your Dream?

Last updated on April 1st, 2012 at 02:39 pm

The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see.

I wonder how many years spent in a meditative state did it take the Chinese master of Zen Buddhism, Huang Po to discover what I did when my thyroid stopped working:

You are not what you think, and quite often what you think is wrong.

Incorrect thinking can get in the way of your life and your dreams.

Until I had my epiphany in the middle of my thyroid hell, this concept was completely lost on me.

There I was, the proud single mother of this terrific kid, self-employed and living life on my terms.

Sure I thought my ex-husband was a bit of a pain, but as far as I could see this was normal for divorced people.

For all its difficulties I liked my life . . . a lot.

So you can imagine my dismay, when one morning, after yet another night of restless sleep (where I’d slept for two hours, then been awake for two – a process that had been going on for weeks on end) I found myself laying with my face cupped in my hands, rocking side to side atop my soft down pillows.

I was thinking, “I just can’t do this. It’s just too hard and I’m so exhausted. I’d just like to go to sleep

and

n o t

w a k e

u p.”

I sat straight up in bed. What in the hell?

For the first time in my life I faced the realization that my thoughts can be wrong – utterly and completely – dead wrong.

I knew in my heart how much I loved my son and how much I still wanted to do with my life. So why was I thinking these crazy thoughts of wanting to sleep for a very long time?

I was smart enough to call my doctor, and upon careful examination, he surmised either I was suffering from sleep apnea or my thyroid was sick.

It turned out to be the latter.

Once I was able to sleep again and began taking thyroid medicine, all thoughts of wanting to become Rip Van Winkle and sleep for 20 years disappeared.

I will never again trust my thoughts – alone – especially the ones that are negative.  I will never forget that day in bed. I knew the thoughts running through my head weren’t correct.  I was fortunate enough to understand those thoughts didn’t align with my life.

But what if you didn’t know this?

How would you know they were wrong thoughts?

What if you are letting those wrong thoughts stop you from going after your dream?

Dr. Daniel G. Amen, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine has been studying brain behavior and has identified 9 “species” of Automatic Negative Thoughts which he calls ANTs.

He concludes that these types of thoughts are automatic, incorrect, and they severely limit a person’s ability to enjoy his or her life.

They are –

1. Always or Never Thinking.
This happens when you think something that happened will “always” repeat itself. You can recognize it with negative thoughts which start, “This always happens to me,” or “I never get . . .”

2. Focusing on the Negative.
This occurs when your thoughts only see the bad in a situation and ignore any of the good parts that might happen. These can occur in situations where you feel you did a great job at something, you receive tons of positive feedback and then one person says something negative and all you can think about is what the one person said over everything else.

3. Fortune Telling.
This is where you predict the worst possible outcome to a situation. Sometimes you can even make the worst happen by thinking this way.

4. Mind Reading.
This happens when you believe that you know what another person is thinking even when they haven’t told you. I like what Dr Amen says here, “Please don’t read my mind, I have enough trouble reading it myself!” These are the thoughts when you think someone is mad at you, but really that person is thinking about a problem they are having in their life, or is worried about something that has absolutely nothing to do with you.

5. Thinking With Your feelings.
This occurs when you believe your negative feelings without ever questioning them. Can you imagine where I’d be today if I hadn’t questioned those thyroid thoughts that had me cupping my face with my hands? I also love what Dr Amen says here and I think we should all put this on our refrigerators, “Feelings are not about truth. They are about feelings!”

6. Guilt Beatings.
Guilt beatings happen when you think with words like “should, must, ought or have to.” These are the thoughts that keep you from the life you dream.

7. Labeling.
Attaching a negative label to yourself or to someone else with words like jerk, frigid, arrogant, dumb, cold, bitch, lazy and irresponsible. This type of thinking builds fences between you and people who just might help you.

8. Personalization.
Personalization occurs when innocuous events are taken to have personal meaning. Someone you know passes you in the store without saying hi and you think they are snubbing you when in actuality they were so deep in thought that they didn’t notice you.

9. Blame.
When you blame something or someone else for the problems in your life, you become a victim of circumstances and you cannot do anything to change your situation.

Dr Amen advises whenever you notice an ANT entering your mind, train yourself to recognize it and write it down. When you write down automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) and talk back to them, you begin to take away their power and gain control of your moods.

An example of this might be – you think someone looked at you in a way that makes you think the ANT thought, “She doesn’t like me!”

You write this ANT thought down and then argue against it with written statements like, “She was tired. She was thinking of something bad that happened in the past. She was worried she looked fat. She was hot and uncomfortable. She was hungry and had low blood sugar. She wasn’t feeling well. She was constipated.”

From doing this exercise you should be able to see that your ANT thought is more wrong than it is true.

To further quote Dr Amen, “ANTs have an illogical logic. By bringing them into the open and examining them on a conscious level, you can see for yourself how little sense it really makes to think these kinds of things to yourself. You take back control over your own life instead of leaving your fate to hyperactive limbic conditioned negative thought patterns.”

Your thoughts really do matter.

They can either help or hurt your big dream efforts. Left unchecked, Automatic Negative Thoughts will affect your dearest relationships, your life’s work, your successes and ultimately your entire life.

Work to kill your ANTs before they crawl all over your dream and haul it off to some ANT farm where you will never see it again.

And wouldn’t that be the biggest dream tragedy of all?

Catherine

Catherine’s dream is to be a motivator and published writer. She is testing her theories on motivation with this blog and the seven other women who have volunteered to be a part of her dream project. Catherine also writes about her life as a mom at the blog A Week In The Life Of A Redhead. Someday, she would also like to be invited to speak at TED as the next Erma Bombeck. Catherine posts Sunday nights.