A mental-health technique treats unwanted thoughts like naughty children seeking attention. Instead of fighting them, acknowledge and accept them by saying "I acknowledge you, I accept you," then focus on releasing tension in your body. The speaker leads a guided exercise to help the thoughts dissolve.
Chapters
Accept the negative. If you want to get rid of any offensive aspect of yourself and all those shadowing negative thoughts and feelings that creep up, the best way to do it is to accept them. Integrate with them. Integrate them into your consciousness. These are aspects of yourself that you have rejected and alienated from what you think as the real you is. They are really naughty children that intentionally cause a problem because they want some attention, even if it's a negative attention. These thoughts can cause all kinds of negative feelings inside of you. We can believe nice people could think such thoughts, so we can then judge ourselves as horrible people for having such miserable thoughts. But the more we fight and resist our negative thoughts, the more they pop up again and again. This is because we are rewarding them with negative attention. If we reward our children with negative attention whenever they do something wrong, they will continue to behave badly. And I'm sure you will agree with me on that, because negative attention is better than no attention at all. It's the same way with our thoughts. The answer is to acknowledge these thoughts as part of ourselves and to integrate them instead of alienating them. By doing so, the thoughts are satisfied, they feel— start feeling loved, and they stop behaving like naughty children. The technique to do this is anytime you have a negative thought, do not dwell on it. Simply say, I acknowledge you. "I accept you," and then feel the thought just dissolve away. Concentrate on the relief and the relaxation that your body feels as it releases the tension from each and every cell. So I want you to concentrate, sit back, and do this exercise with your eyes closed, and put it in the comments below as to how you really felt.
