Special appreciation goes out to Eric William Sigmund, M.A., C.M. for allowing me to use his material. Eric is a world renowned Transactional Analysis Therapist and this is my summary of his copyrighted material.
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Take 10 minutes every day to do this “practice.”
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There must be no distractions, so turn on the answer machine, turn the ringer off and get agreement from family members not to disturb you during this time.
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“Ask” for all of the negative thoughts that you have had today and simply write down the exact 180-degree polar opposite thought. Example: You are unhappy that you did not see enough patients today. You would write, “I am so happy and excited with all of the patients I saw today, my office was overflowing with people today.
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This is a “practice,” you do not need to believe what you are writing, or even want it to be true. You simply need to write the opposite thought down and continue for 10 minutes.
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You must write versus type because we are accessing a part of the brain when you were a child and learning to write.
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If after a few minutes you cannot think of any more negative thoughts you had today and you start to think that you don’t enjoy this and don’t want to be doing this right now, you would then write that you do enjoy this and do want to do this right now.
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After a few days of doing this you might start to notice that you have a few categories of negative thoughts, i.e. bad drivers, spouse, work, not enough new patients, insurance adjusters etc. You might also be amazed at how many negative thoughts you have per day.
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Remember that repeating negativistic dialogue in your head is self-abuse, and you cannot continue abusing yourself without eventually abusing others. You need to quit scaring yourself with these negative thoughts. All of the negative thoughts and what if’s are literally scaring your inner child. After the 4th scary thought your blood chemistry has changed enough with the adrenaline and nor epinephrine etc. that you literally hardly have a chance of physiologically being centered for approximately 8 hours.
Remember the concept of “build you and they will come.” If you are negative, you will attract negative and repel the positive. If you want the life and practice of your dreams, you will need to attract it!
Eric says, “We think the thought, speak the word, do the action, become the character.”
Look at what you want in your life. Are you causing what you want? Do you believe that your thoughts have a very strong causal relationship with your outer life? Look at your thoughts. If they are not congruent with what you want, change your thoughts. The first step in changing our thoughts and our destiny is being aware of the thoughts we are having during each day.
The purpose of this exercise is to realize how many negative thoughts a day you are having, and to “feel the discomfort” of these negative thoughts earlier so you can do the “5-steps to end abuse” before a “real” problem arises. (See 5 steps to end abuse article.)
Good luck, this one is worth investing 10 minutes a day to.
Russ Rosen, D.C. – Feb 25, 2003
