Читать книгу The Road to Resilience - Adam Przytula - Страница 22

Your brain is a muscle. Just like any other muscle in your body, it needs exercise. Instead of running, jumping or dancing for exercise, your brain gets a workout by thinking. Each time you have a thought, a different neural pathway in your brain is exercised. The more ‘reps’ you do of this thought, the stronger the neural pathway becomes. If you do a hundred bicep curls every day, you'll notice your biceps getting bigger (and at first, really sore). Similarly, if you think, ‘I'm stupid’ one hundred times every day, the neural pathway associated with that thought grows stronger. The thought becomes more ingrained, more believable and more automatic.

Instead of letting ANTs happen, you can choose to be aware of your thoughts by using your feelings as a cue. How?

First, if you start to feel down, try to identify the thought that caused this.

Second, challenge the thought. Ask yourself, ‘Is this thought true?’ Just because your mind is telling you something, it doesn't automatically make it fact.