Limiting Beliefs: Overcoming the “ANTs” in Your Way – Those Automatic Negative Thoughts

Those Automatic Negative Thoughts

Professor O’Neil and His Fire Ants

My first college class was English 1101. Professor O’Neil was hilarious! He made learning fun, and told the best stories. His stories always had a way of relating back to the subject, and ultimately kept me coming back to class instead of hanging out with my friends, doing things I shouldn’t be, and not preparing for my future.

Professor O’Neil was from Minnesota, and moved to Florida to start teaching at the local college. Not long after he moved to the sunny southwest side of this tropical area he had his first encounter with fire ants. Now keep in mind that fire ants were not indigenous to Florida, and they especially didn’t like newcomers.

Standing in the thick Bermuda grass of his back yard admiring his new home and relaxing after a long day of teaching, Professor O’Neil immediately began to scream out in numbing pain.

What the **!? He looked down to find dozens, probably even hundreds, of little red fire ants attached to his bare skin, all biting at once. Reacting immediately, he swiped, rubbed, and tried to squash those little suckers.

Unpleasant Surprise

How could something so small, so seemingly innocuous be so terrible, he thought. Of course he didn’t realize the lasting effect the bites would have on his sensitive skin. Oh boy was he in for a surprise.

Within minutes red, pimple like pustules started to pop up on Professor O’Neil’s legs. At first they were quite painful and sensitive to the touch. A few hours later they became itchy and he couldn’t stop scratching.

“What kind of place has ants that bite so intensely? And how will I ever be able to go out in my yard again without fear of attack from these hidden creatures?” My college professor may know how to diagram a sentence, but he definitely wasn’t Florida field smart, at least not yet.

Days passed before his legs looked like normal again. He did though share that the raised red bumps remained for weeks later, preventing him from wearing shorts in public, and even at home as it reminded him of the battle cry to attack by this vicious enemy.

ANTs in Our Minds

We all get attacked by ants in our lives. Sometimes it’s a physical attack, as in Professor O’Neil’s unfortunate example. Other times the ants that attack us are in our minds.

These internal “ANTs” can be even more damaging though. They attack us relentlessly, and sometimes we don’t have a spray or a swatter or a way to get rid of them.

Renown neuroscientist Dr. Mark Amen, author of “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life”, calls these “ANTs”: Automatic Negative Thoughts. Pretty easy to remember but sometimes not so easy on our outlook.

Self-Talk and Motivation – Does everyone have internal messages?

Many times throughout the day we speak to ourselves. Our messages sometimes are encouraging, positive, and uplifting. “Hey, great job on that project!”; “You’re so good at connecting with people and makin them feel comfortable”; “That was super how you prepared for the presentation and knocked it out of the park!”

Just hearing this makes you feel good, doesn’t it?

What is “self-talk”?

As much as we’d like to hear the positive, unfortunately our thoughts can be dominated by negative self-talk. Neuroscientists explain that we have upwards of 50,000 independent thoughts daily. And many of these are not so positive.

Imagine 50,000 real ants on your skin, all attacking, biting away, leaving marks and welts and scars. It’s difficult to imagine, I get it. That’s what negative thoughts do to us though. They bite, they hurt, and they can leave a permanent mark on us.

Close to 70% – yes 70%! – of our thoughts can be negative, and negative about ourselves. “I am going to screw this up like I always do.”; “They don’t like me.”; “I’m just bad at communicating my ideas in an organized way.”; “I will probably fail and embarrass myself in front of everyone.”

How do you feel hearing these statements? I bet you can almost feel your hopes dashed, your shoulders slumping, and you feel defeated. Crazy, isn’t it?

Identify your ANTs

To help eliminate your internal ANTs first I’m going to ask you to see your ANTs. Professor O’Neil likely stood directly on that fire ant pile. Being new to Florida he was likely unaware of the dangers of these tiny attacking creatures. However if he knew what they were, where they were, and how to avoid them his legs would be much happier.

So that’s what we’re going to do now. Identify your ANTs, then we can squash them.

Take a look back on some of the missteps and mistakes that you feel you have made. Do you still have strong feelings of these thoughts?

Do you let this past overtake you at times?

Have you let the opinions of others determine your actions?

Do you still let the opinions of others determine your actions?

If you keep telling yourself that you can’t do something, or that you’re not good enough, or that you tried before but it didn’t work, or that you’re not pretty enough or rich enough or whatever, you won’t even attempt to try to do that.

What are the messages we tell ourselves?

You aren’t smart enough…

If you take a risk and fail you’re a failure…

You’re too old…

What are some of the messages you tell yourself?

Squash Your ANTs and Reframe Your Negative Self-Talk

Just like when attacked physically by those fire ants as with Professor O’Neil, you need to go on the offensive and stop the ANTs that infiltrate our minds. But instead of letting the ANTs attack first, or letting them keep reminding us of our failures, we can stop the bites.

How do you do this? Reframe your thoughts by doing the following:

Consider how each of your messages may reinforce your negative self-talk
Reframe each message with a positive, encouraging message
What are the possible outcomes of changing your negative messages to positive, encouraging messages?
Imagine the very worst possible scenario that could occur if your negative thoughts came to pass…
Imagine the very best possible scenario that could occur if your negative thoughts did not come to pass…
Now think of the outcome that is most realistic and likely to occur…

Event + Response = Outcome

E + R = O

We have to remind ourselves that often – in fact most of the time – we can’t control events that happen. Stuff happens. Stuff happens to us. But, to get a different outcome, you have to respond differently. It is up to you to take responsibility for how you respond.

The same applies to our thoughts. We can control our thoughts and images in our mind. When we take control of our thoughts, we become deliberate, not reactive.

This simple formula will absolutely change your perspective and outlook. When we take 100% responsibility for our actions, our thoughts, and our images, we can shift our mindset from one of negativity to a positive, forward-looking point.

Mindset Shift

This shift in perspective is the key to your success in every area of your life. Switch your thinking from “I can’t”, to “I can”, “I will”, and “I am”. The first step is to take 100% responsibility for your thoughts. Now, make it stick.

Follow Up to Make It Stick

To prevent ANTs from attacking and knocking you down, answer these questions and apply the learnings:

Where am I not taking 100% responsibility for my thoughts and actions?

Tell yourself: “When I have X negative thought, I will replace it with Y positive thought!”

How can I use this in my professional life?

How can I use this in my personal life?

Why is this important to use for me?

Remember, you can and will squash those ANTs!