In this Day 8 lesson of the Autumn Blues self‑help course, the presenter introduces a set of imagination‑based techniques for handling intrusive or distressing thoughts. She first explains visualization, noting that the brain reacts to imagined actions similarly to real ones, a method used by elite athletes. She then presents the “tennis racket” approach: mentally picturing a racket (or any forceful object) and striking unwanted thoughts away, using a personal story about coping with her mother’s terminal illness to illustrate its impact. The technique builds on the established “swish pattern,” where each repeated displacement weakens a thought’s power until it fades. A higher‑level exercise, the “thought prosecution,” invites learners to put a negative thought on trial, seeking factual evidence to determine its truthfulness, thereby reducing its influence. The lesson concludes with a concise recap of the three steps—forceful displacement, persistent rallying, and evidential trial—encouraging listeners to experiment with the methods and previewing the next tip.
Chapters
Hi, and welcome to day 8. And today's tip, I confess, is a lot like Marmite. You're either gonna love it or you're gonna hate it. And you know, that's okay. You may have found already that within the 7 tips that we've shared, some really resonate with you and some don't, and that's absolutely fine. This one is a little different, and it's one that I use a lot therapeutically with people, and it's all about using your imagination. The technique is called visualization, and it's a technique that pretty much all of the top-level athletes— we've recently had the Olympics, and I'm very confident that all of those at the top will be using visualization as a technique because it works on the premise that the mind can't tell the difference between reality or imagination. So whether you're thinking something or doing something, the same neural networks are firing in your mind. And it's a wonderful technique we can then use in training the mind to do things that you want to do habitually. And we're going to play with this concept of imagination. And I've had clients in the past saying, I don't have an imagination, I can't picture things in my mind. And I haven't yet found someone where that's genuinely true. If I say to someone, well, describe the— describe your bedroom to me, they'll start saying, oh well, it's got green walls and I've got a blue duvet, whatever it may be. And I said, yeah, but you're imagining that. You're picturing it in your mind. And they're like, oh, yeah. So we all tend— or should I say, everyone that I've met so far has always been able to imagine in some ways. And I get it, some of us are far more creative than others. So for those of us that are creative, You're going to find this one really easy, and I call it generically the tennis racket approach. Unless you are a Franciscan monk that's been practice meditating, practicing meditating for a long time, it's really hard to stop thoughts coming in. So let's not even try. But you don't have to keep them there. And this technique really came from a situation that I had a few years ago. My mother was terminally ill, and I was driving down the M3 to take her to a chemo session, and I suddenly become aware that I was crying because I was thinking about what I was going to say at her funeral. And how ridiculous is that? You know, bless her, she was still with us at that time, but my head— had gone out to— we'd lost her, I was at the funeral. The thoughts were causing me to cry because of that grief that became very, very tangible at the time. And I mentally took my tennis racket and went, get out my head! Federer would have been proud of such a backhand. And you know, that thought genuinely did not come back until the point where I did sit down to write her obituary because the funeral was 2 days later. This is the power of this technique. Now, tennis may not be your thing. Doesn't have to be a tennis racket. You could use a baseball bat, you could use a golf club, you could just kick it. The whole point is, with a lot of force, you go, out of my head! And just like In tennis, you may get into a bit of a rally. It comes back, you kick it away again. It comes back, you smash it away again, and you keep going. And this builds on a recognized therapeutic technique called the swish pattern. Every time you push a thought away, it loses a little bit of a power, and each time it comes back, it's not quite so strong. And you push it away, it's a bit weaker. You push it away until eventually It stops coming back. So you can use a combination of both. With mine, one massive great backhand lob and that thought disappeared off into eternity. Other times with more perpetual thoughts, you may need to get into a rally and keep pushing it away, but it will lose the power each time you push it away until you just don't notice it anymore. So that's the basic technique that I would love you to start using. And then if you want to go on to a slightly higher level, this one is quite a lot of fun if you really get into it. It's taking your thought to court. I want you to mentally prosecute your thought by looking for facts to see whether it's true or not. So if yesterday in the video I spoke about my thought that I used to have regularly is, I'm always late. So I put my I'm always late thought on trial. Where's the facts that it's true? And of course the evidence is it's not true. It's occasionally true, but we're not going to bang him up because occasionally The thought was true. So when you seek the evidence, and your mind loves asking— sorry, answering questions. So if you say, what's the evidence that it's true? Well, you were late then, but you weren't late then. And perhaps you're a little bit late then, but then, then, then, and then you weren't. And suddenly your mind has become the jury. And it finds that thought not guilty, so it can leave free, and you don't have to dwell on it anymore. Now, you may be sitting there thinking, going, this is just a little bit weird. Yes, it is. I do weird, and you can do weird too, because no one knows you're doing that in your mind. No one knows you have a tennis racket or you're holding court With a thought in your head. But your head knows it, the database knows it, and these techniques really do work. So, just to summarize, get a tennis racket, golf club, whatever it may be, have it there so when you get a thought that comes in that's really powerful, you meet it with equal power and smack it out of your head. If you've got a more niggly thought that just keeps coming back, keep pushing it away, because you will win that rally when you persist. And if you wish to, put your thought on trial, see if it's guilty, but the chances are when you really look for the evidence, it is just not there and the case falls apart. So have fun with this. And 2 more to go! I can't believe how quickly we're getting through all of this. I will be back with you tomorrow with tip number 9, and I wish you the most perfect of days. Bye-bye for now.
