You know what’s worse than neg­a­tive thinking?

Beating your­self up for neg­a­tive thinking.

It’s actu­ally pretty com­i­cal, when you think about it, to deal with neg­a­tive think­ing by think­ing neg­a­tively about your neg­a­tive think­ing. Read more

During my first year of teach­ing, I vividly remem­ber get­ting so frus­trated with my study hall class (because they were basi­cally hav­ing a big old party in the mid­dle of my class­room) that I slammed a metal file cab­i­net drawer shut as hard as I could to get everyone’s atten­tion. Then I yelled at them. A lot. My face was red and hot. My arms were wav­ing wildly. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. This, my friends, is the lizard brain in action. The stu­dents were quiet for the next ten min­utes. And then they started par­ty­ing again. Effective, huh? Read more

Last week, I wrote can­didly about gos­sip and explored some of the lim­it­ing beliefs that live below the sur­face of my gos­sip habit. Today, I will show you my favorite method for dis­solv­ing these sorts of beliefs. Read more

What food rules and restric­tions have you set for your­self and why? Are those rules serv­ing you well? Do they increase or decrease your joy? Are they com­ing from fear or love?

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Melissa Anderson is one of the coolest peo­ple I know. She is a sci­en­tist, a marathon run­ner, a deep thinker, and totally freakin’ hilar­i­ous. I am thrilled to have devel­oped a friend­ship with her and very excited to share a piece she has writ­ten about her own expe­ri­ences with neg­a­tive thoughts. Enjoy!

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If you haven’t been fol­low­ing this three-part series on han­dling unhelp­ful thoughts, you may want to begin by check­ing out my two pre­vi­ous posts on this subject:

Step 1:  Watch your thoughts

Step 2: Question your thoughts

Today, I am shar­ing step 3, which is to recre­ate your thoughts.

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Welcome to part two of  a three-part series on thoughts. Chances are, your thoughts are keep­ing you blocked from a great deal of joy.  Last week, I shared the foun­da­tional skill of watch­ing your thoughts. Now, it’s time to ques­tion them. Read more

Last week, I posted twice about the impor­tance of fully expe­ri­enc­ing neg­a­tive feel­ings rather than try­ing to fix them or run from them. But what about neg­a­tive thoughts? I have found there are three basic steps for han­dling unhelp­ful thoughts: watch them, ques­tion them, and recre­ate them. Because each step is rather involved, I am divid­ing this post into three parts, each part focused on one of the steps. Read more