Plants grow with water and sunlight, a riverbed deepens with more water or a longer time frame, time and energy invested into a business brings it to fruition…our thoughts are the same way — put energy into it and it gets stronger.
When we invest energy in thoughts, they increase in power and frequency and can seemingly become more ‘true’ then before. This is as true with the positive thoughts as the negative and if Tony Robbins can build a business helping on the positive we certainly have enough power to build up the negative.
Let’s imagine a simple negative feedback loop thought pattern: a triggering Action, a Triggered Thought, and an Internal Reaction (unconscious or conscious), and The Commitment to that reaction.
- Action: Do something non-optimal like say something dumb at a party
- Triggered Thought: that is the learned response to that activity — in this example “saying that thing was dumb” (which by the way is not always a bad learned thought)
- The Internal Reaction: the ‘what does this say about me’ feeling, response, or extrapolation, like “I am ashamed I’m that type of person who says those dumb things”
- The Commitment: “I’m always going to be that person who screws up and never amounts to anything…” this is the rumination or doubling down on the Internal Reaction, this is where it’s decided how long this will live on in our psyche
Everything along this journey is learned.
The Action, Thought, Reaction, and Commitment — all of it is learned or socialized behavior from our environment that we have developed to further survival.
Chances are most of these learnings that are learned from others were actually sub-optimally imprinted on us at some point.
Most of these behaviors at one point served a purpose, they were developed as a method of self-preservation, survival, self-defense, or for some way distancing one’s self from negative stimulation. However, most of these patterns are outdated and no longer serve us.
At every point along this cycle, there are opportunities to exit this pattern of intrusive thoughts and rumination rumination and it all begins with the same step: Noticing.
Once cannot exit this negative cycle unless it’s noticed, once it’s noticed, progress can be made. The rest of the steps can go as follows:
- Notice: identify the thought pattern, intrusive thought, and/or negative feedback loop wherever along this cycle
- Accept: accept that this is occurring and it’s ok. Accept the Thought, Action, Reaction, and/or the Commitment — wherever the ‘noticing’ happens, accept that it’s ok to be in that place and it doesn’t need to change and doesn’t need to ‘stop’ (wanting it to ‘stop’ feeds the fire). Truly take a moment to accept that it/you are ok in that moment and don’t ‘need’ to change
- Inquire for 3: ask “why am I having this response?” 3 times. This will uncover the feelings we are searching for within the negative feedback loop associated with intrusive thoughts.
- Cement: Commit to the answer discovered in the 3rd “Why?” and appreciate the fact that there is a meaningful message. Allow value to be realized from the experience.
These simple steps can help lessen the power of intrusive thoughts, rumination, and negative feedback loops. We can learn to see value in those thoughts and experiences as something to be integrated into our curious observation of the world.
— @thatmhg
founder, www.avalo.app
