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Stop
Sweating, See the Splendor: No. 2, November 2001
A
free monthly newsletter about living with greater inner peace and happiness and
seeing the splendor in your life instead of what is wrong or lacking. This
newsletter is based on the workshops by Kevin Stacey. For previous issues,
please visit the archives at
http://www.TrainRightInc.com.
Feel
free to forward this newsletter in its entirety to your friends and colleagues
so they can subscribe. If someone forwarded this issue to you and you'd like to
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Please
let me know what you'd like to see here. I love hearing from you.
Thank you so much for your support!
Copyright
2001 Kevin Stacey. All rights reserved.
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In this issue:
1.
Monthly Article: Making Room for Joyful Thinking - Melting
the Snowballs in Your Mind.
2.
Privacy statement.
3.
How to request more information about
Kevin’s services.
4.
How to Subscribe / Unsubscribe.
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1. Monthly Article:
Making Room for Joyful Thinking -
Melting the Snowballs in Your Mind
A mental snowball occurs whenever you allow
negative thoughts to build up and race out of control. It’s the mental
equivalent of your tires being stuck in the mud. The more you spin the wheels,
the deeper you’re stuck. Although mental snowballs happen all year,
they’re particularly present during the holidays. Once pleasant thoughts of
seeing friends and family can quickly snowball into stress over shopping,
cooking, cleaning, traveling, family tensions, disappointing childhood
memories, and on and on. See how fast the snowball gathers momentum? This
holiday season, make a decision to melt your mental snowballs and experience
the holidays for what they were meant to be - a joyful time of peace, comfort
and thanksgiving.
5
steps to melt any mental snowball:
1. Write it down, write it down, write it down.
When you begin to
snowball, immediately grab a piece of paper and write down whatever is going on
in your mind at that moment. What exactly are you thinking? What exactly are you
saying to yourself? The act of writing out your thoughts and clearly defining
your snowball helps you focus on and destroy the catalyst for your negative
thoughts.
Just “thinking things through” is unrealistic when your mind is racing and
bouncing in a million different directions.
2. Identify
the thought distortion in your snowball.
Mental snowballs
are generated from unrealistic and distorted thoughts, often reflecting “worst
case scenario” thinking. When you write out your thoughts you expose this
thinking in black and white. Take a look at what you wrote in step 1. Do you recognize any of the following thought distortions?
§
Jumping to conclusions - without any
credible evidence, you predict things will turn out badly.
§
Over generalizing - you view a single
negative event as an infinite pattern of defeat, using such words as “never”
and “always.”
§
All-or-nothing thinking - if a situation
falls short of your expectations of perfection, you see it as a total disaster.
§
Mental filtering - you pick out one
negative detail and dwell on it until you can’t see anything else, discarding
any positive thoughts along the way.
§
Mind reading - you assume without any
evidence or verification that others are reacting negatively to you, are angry
with you, etc.
§
Control delusions - you either feel that
you have total responsibility for everything and everybody, or you feel that you
have no control or influence and you’re a helpless victim.
§
Emotional reasoning - you assume that
things are in reality the way you feel about them emotionally.
§
Disregarding the positive- you overlook any
positive occurrences or actions by insisting they don’t matter. Everyone
around you may see that you’ve done well, but you may tell yourself it
wasn’t good enough or doesn’t count.
§
Self blaming - you blame yourself for
things that may not really be your fault, under your control, or your
responsibility.
§
Labeling - you call yourself or others a
global name when you or they make a mistake.
§
Personalizing - you assume that everything
has something to do with you, and you tend to compare yourself negatively to
everyone else.
3.
Talk back to your distortion.
After identifying
which of the distorted thoughts underlies your mental snowball, talk back to
them and poke holes in the logic that appears to support the distortion. Come up
with counter arguments, as if you were participating in a debate and your goal
was to knock out your opponent’s position. Read your writing out loud. Respond
to each assertion you wrote with one of the following questions or statements:
§
“How do I know for sure?”
§
“What evidence do I have?”
§
“What is the probability that is going to
happen?”
§
“Maybe, maybe not.”
§
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to
it.”
§
“One day at a time.”
§
“Perhaps.”
§
“I’m jumping to conclusions.”
This step will
help you identify whether you are accepting your thoughts as facts without first
assessing reality.
4.
Exaggerate the snowball until it becomes ridiculous.
Psychologist
Albert Ellis calls this technique “awfulizing.” In your mind or on paper,
exaggerate your negative thinking and extend your snowball to the most
ridiculous degree. The inherent humor in exaggeration counteracts the physical
effects of the stress and panic that accompany mental snowballs. If you can
ridicule the snowball, it won’t have power over you anymore. You can do this
one on paper, but it works even better if you have the courage to say it out
loud to a trusted friend.
5.
Attack the process of snowball thinking by asking,
“What is this costing me?”
If
you can’t identify any distortions, focus instead on the process of snowball
thinking rather than the content of your thoughts. Ask yourself the questions,
“What is it costing me to engage in snowball thinking? How does a mental
snowball help my situation?” Make a list of the advantages and disadvantages
of snowball thinking. One person shared with me that he engaged in snowball
thinking whenever he thought about his wife, who had been diagnosed with breast
cancer. He melted this snowball with the following thoughts: “My wife does
have cancer, and I can’t change that fact, but the more I get worked up over
this, the less I’m going to be able to be there for her. Also, the more she
sees that I’ve lost it, the more she will lose it.” A powerful example that
attacking the process itself can work in even the most difficult circumstances.
Remember, the
goal is not to control every negative thought you ever have, but rather to
control whether or not you focus on your negative thoughts and allow them to
snowball. As one recent seminar participant told me, “There is so much snow in
the world, and I’m surrounded by it, but it is so empowering and uplifting to
realize I am in charge of what I let snowball.” Imagine what your life would
be like if you melted just half your snowballs. What if you melted them 5
minutes faster than you used to? Give the techniques above a try and see what
happens. Believe you’re in charge of it and you can do it!
Best wishes for a peaceful and joyful
Thanksgiving.
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2. PRIVACY STATEMENT: Your name or e-mail address will never
never be distributed, sold, traded, or rented, to anyone
without your permission.
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3.
Kevin Stacey is a professional speaker/trainer
who works with organizations that want to enhance their bottom line by investing
in their most important resource, their people,
through training programs that increase their effectiveness and eliminate
negativity and self-induced problems. He develops and delivers captivating
programs packed with practical information that seminar participants can
immediately put to use. With an extensive background in clinical healthcare
through both civilian and military settings and the managed care industry, he
has developed a variety of training programs and presented to over 5,000
participants in 26 states and 3 nations.
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Contact
Information:
Kevin M. Stacey
Trainright, Inc.
43 Kosta St.
Worcester, MA 01607
(617) 680-2600
E-mail:
Kevin@KevinStacey.com
Web:
www.KevinStacey.com or www.TrainRightInc.com
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For a
free consulting call to determine the most appropriate
customized training
program for your organization and it’s
particular challenges call (617)
680-2600.
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For an
on-line demo video clip of Kevin in action, click here:
http://www.kevinstacey.com/On-line%20demo%20video.htm
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Click
below for the curriculum/program highlights of Kevin’s
corporate training
programs:
http://www.kevinstacey.com/Programs.htm
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4.
Subscription Information
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©
Copyright 2001 Kevin Stacey/TrainRight, Inc.
This
newsletter and its content are proprietary products.
All rights reserved. I
encourage sharing this newsletter in whole if copyright and attribution are
always included.
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