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From "Why Me?" to "What's The Lesson?": Breaking Free from Negativity · No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hi, welcome to a mini episode of no Shrinking Violence.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: So as a therapist, I know one of the toughest things for clients to overcome is negative mindset.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Now let me tell you a little about what I mean by that, because sometimes we can say, oh, she's so negative.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And when I say negative mindset, what I mean by that is we tend to look at a situation and because we are wired to keep ourselves safe, we often see the worst part of it first.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: That's just how we're made.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: We have to be able to assess something.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: But what happens when we have the executive functioning of humans is it can go a little beyond helpful into a space that's not helpful and we can start to see the world in the worst possible light, looking at all the things that went wrong, and we can tend to think why is this happening to me?
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: And that is something that tends to perpetuate itself.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I think of it sort of rumination, negative thinking.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Think of it as, let's say, you have a muddy field and you're on a motorcycle or a dirt bike and you keep going around and around in a circle.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: You're going to make a pretty deep chasm there, right from the tires.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: When that dries it's going to harden, so it makes it a lot harder when you're riding through that field to not kind of fall into that circular pattern.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: So what you want to try to do is just change the way that you're thinking about what's happening to you.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: And so the first part of that is again to recognize when you're saying, why is this happening to me?
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: It can feel like the world is out to get you.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: So instead, try to take a minute and ask yourself instead what can I learn from this?
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: So if there's a situation where you feel like you're stuck in traffic, you're going to be late for work again, think about okay, this seems to be a pattern I'm frustrated with the traffic, I'm frustrated with the fact that when I get to work, I'm rushing to get to the first meeting or people are noticing I'm late.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Think instead what could I do differently?
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: What is this teaching me?
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Well, it might mean that it's better to leave 15 minutes earlier.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: That's the one part of this is to recognize when you've slipped into that rut and when you tend to see the world in the things that are going wrong, because there's always going to be something that goes wrong.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: So if you tend to say it's just a bad day, or it's one of those days, or I should have stayed in bed.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those things can lighten the mood and we can sometimes say them with a sense of humor, but there's always something good.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: And when things seem to be repeatedly happening, that's when it's time to switch from why is this happening to me, or why do these things always happen to me, to what is this teaching me, because the world is going to keep knocking on your door and if you're not answering, it's gonna basically break it down.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: So there's a little mind shift from why is this happening to me to what is this teaching me.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.