Day 7 of the Autumn Blues Course

Hi there and welcome to day 7. How did you get on with registering for one of the daily affirmations yesterday? Have you got that subscription running yet? And it may be that you're finding that it's hard to keep up with these videos. I get it, life is busy, but the videos are always going to be there so you can go back. And even if it takes this a few weeks for you to go through all of these videos, they're absolutely fine. They're going to stay there for you to access for as long as you need them. And today's video is, I would say, the greatest challenge of all of the techniques to adopt. So before you run away and go, oh, I can't do difficult, I need something easy today, don't worry, come back to this if you need to. But by being the most difficult, I would also say it is the best one for you to learn how to use. This isn't just a tool to help you during the autumn blues. It is a tool that when, not if, you get your head around and start using is going to give you a phenomenal level of mental resilience, really taking you to the next level of using your mind in a way that's going to create genuinely a lifetime of difference. Because by not having this tool is one of the key reasons as to why a lot of people struggle with their mental health. And I don't want to go into a huge amount of psychology around this, so let's keep it simple. Let's go back to Mother Nature. As you're probably gathering, I spend A lot of time in nature. And it was probably a few weeks ago, I was out walking the dogs and it started to rain and suddenly rained quite hard. And I stood there watching this trickle of water, just starting with a few little drops of water meandering its way down a gentle slope, pushing leaves out of the way. But within a very short space of time, that little trickle had become— come quite a stream of water, and it had become the path of least resistance that all of the water was then funneling through and rushing very fast. And if we take that over years, millions of years, we get ravines where water just goes down flowing freely with nothing to stop it. And if we were to then transpose water for thoughts It works in exactly the same way. One little thought, the same as one little drop of water, doesn't make any difference. But when another one comes, and another one, and another one comes, it creates a little stream that creates a ravine that creates a path of least resistance that things just flow down without anything stopping it. If those thoughts are positive, not a problem. But often they're negative. And so the technique for today is all about starting to become more aware of your own self-talk. We spoke back in the first video about how back here there is a database, next-door neighbor to the inner Neanderthal. And everything goes into that database. There's not a little filter that's going, oh, rubbish, bin that. That's good, bring it in. It all just goes in, and it goes in from outside, from things that you are told, things that you are here, but also things that you say inside too. Your thoughts filter into your database, and thoughts that are repeated time and time again become beliefs, and beliefs inform our behaviors. So to give you an example, I'm assuming you pay for everything that you want when you go in a shop. You don't steal because you have heard time and time again, you mustn't steal, you must pay for everything that you want, it's wrong to steal. So those thoughts, those words have gone in time and time again, created a path of least resistance, created a behavior That now means you automatically pay for everything you wish to have. That's how powerful perpetuated thoughts are. So our negative thoughts are equally as powerful. So if you regularly say out loud or inside your head, "Oh, I'm such an idiot! Oh, I'm so stupid! I'm a real idiot!" Then your brain is going, "Yeah." We can do that. That can become a belief, and I can create the behavior that makes that belief active. So, as always, we're going to put this into layers. The first layer, the basic start, is I would love for you to ask a few people that you know, love, and trust. To tell you what they hear you regularly saying. Because what tends to happen is we become unaware of what we're saying about ourselves, but it is just that background noise that's going on. So ask someone, what do I regularly say about myself that's not very kind? And so they may say, you know, you do often say that you're stupid or you're useless at that. And then what that does is put it on your radar. And this is something that I do as a therapist. One of my little words that I don't like people using is try. There's a little sign just over on the wall there from the god that is Yoda that says, do or do not do, there is no try. So if I hear one of my clients saying, oh, I'm going to try and do that, I will very gently say, Don't try. Are you going to do it or are you not going to do it? And usually they'll go, Oh yeah, you're right, I'll do it. And I had a lovely moment with a client actually just last week. She'd had a few sessions and often used the word try, and she started saying something and she said, Oh, I'm gonna try— ah, no, I'm not gonna try, I'm gonna do that. Because it was on her radar, she picked it up, and she automatically corrected herself, and that's what we want to get to. So ask your friends, family, colleagues, people you trust to put on your radar the things that they're aware that you say a lot about yourself. And you can do what I have done in the past with my family that's called insult bingo. So we gave each other permission that whenever you hear one of the family members saying something negative about yourself, you go, Insult bingo! Yeah, I know it's a bit weird, but it's within our walls. Nobody else knows apart from you now. And it puts again on the radar you've just said something negative about yourself. The next step then is to correct it. So I used to say quite a lot, um, I'm late. Oh, I'm always late. Oh, just— I'm always late. But it wasn't true. I wasn't always late. I was sometimes late. So my truth was, rather than always late, when I found myself or heard myself thinking that, saying that, was to stop and go, the truth is I am sometimes late. I live in the countryside. I often get stuck behind horses, tractors. I'm sometimes late. But I always do my best to get there on time. Because that is the truth. And when you speak your truth, that equally starts to inform a higher level of behavior. Because I noticed when I used to say, I'm always late, when I had 5 minutes before I had to leave, I'd do something that takes 10 minutes because that belief was, well, you're going to be late anyway, you might as well. Be late, and you created a behavior that justified that belief. Whereas now I look and say, I've got 5 minutes to go, why don't I go now? Because then I might get there 5 minutes early. Wouldn't that be nice? Because I'm doing my best. So maybe if that works for you, get insult bingo running within your house. And I've even heard of a group of people in a workplace doing it together really, really successfully. And when bingo is called because someone's recognized that you've said something negative, rephrase it to what is a positive for you. And I'd like you to avoid any generalizations. So generalizations are words that don't give any wriggle room for variance. So words like always, never, Um, nowhere, and change it for words that are true— sometimes, often, occasionally— because they are real. And when you speak your truth, that is very powerful in the database too. So that's today's activity. Become really aware of what is going on either in the words that are coming out of your mouth about yourself all the thoughts that are going on inside your mind about yourself. And the acid test is, if you wouldn't say what you're saying or thinking to your friend, don't say it to yourself. That's the self-talk that needs to change so that you start to behave in a way that directs all of those thoughts down a positive channel rather than a negative one that creates that negative belief. This will take time, it will take a little bit of effort, but it will be so, so worth it when you achieve it. So do give this one a go, and I will look forward to bringing tip number 8 to you tomorrow. Bye-bye for now.