About five years ago I had one of the HUGEST aha moments of my life. I’m talking light bulb, epiphany, angel’s singing, paradigm shift, vision opened – you name the metaphor, I experienced it.

I wish I could re-create the experience for you instantaneously here on this post. Such experiences loose some of their Sha-Zam in the retelling.

In that moment, I discovered that my brain was lying to me. How rude! I assumed (took for granted, really), that my brain would always tell me the truth.

Not so.

It turns out that the human brain is a massive recording device that captures every message the five senses receive and deliver even from the time we are embryos growing in utero. Imagine. Every conversation, sound, and TV commercial we’ve ever been exposed to is swirling around in our brain’s data base. When we are not consciously in control of our thoughts, the brain flips through its myriad files and chooses its own “scripts” or programs to run. This is the brain on autopilot, and its a dangerous thing because those automatic programs are not always accurate. And they run amuck like stampeding buffalo.

First. Pay attention. Identify your ANTs.

Big concept here. What are the ANTs (the Automatic Negative Thoughts) your brain defaults to when you are not consciously running your brain?

Second. Write Down your ANTs.

Write down your ANTs. Get a notebook and draw a line down the middle of the page. On the left, write down your ANTs. What does your brain tell you over and over, like a broken record? For years, one of my ANTs was that because I was a full-time mother without a salary check with my name in print on the payee line, I was a sub-par version of a successful person. My brain would tell me this concept over and over with different wording or presentation, but the message was always the same. This really made my life miserable, because I was a full-time mom spending every waking hour (and lots of midnight hours) doing “mom work” for no pay. And I wasn’t even aware that my own brain was making me miserable.

Third. Write Down the TRUTH.

On the right side of your paper, next to your ANT, write down the truth. This is how you train your wild buffalo. For example, on my paper I wrote:
ANT: By choosing to be a mother without a paying career, I am not as important, successful, or valid as a person with a paying job.
TRUTH: Being a Mother is the most important, critical, valuable job in the world. Even if I earned a paycheck, my work at a “job” would not be more important than my work as a mother.

Fourth. Replace your ANTs with Truth.

Be conscious of when your brain hits the “continual repeat” button and plays your ANTs like a broken record. When you catch your brain “playing” an ANT script, consciously replace that ANT with your truth.

Fifth. Feel the Power.

There is power in writing down the fallicies that your brain automatically tells you. Putting those falsehoods into words drains them of their power. Writing them on paper makes you realize how absurd they can be and diminishes the hold they have on you.

Writing down your truth is powerful. Verbalizing how you really think and feel (or want to think and feel) gives you power over your brain’s auto-programming. It’s amazing how much power we give away. We let the messages that have come into our brain for years dictate how we feel about our lives. No one can drive your life wagon better than you can. No one can decide better than you can where you want to go.

Once you start to become aware of the wild buffalo (those untamed ANTs) that steer your wagon off course, it’s amazing how you can whip them into shape and start driving off into the sunset. If that’s where you want to go.

mw

According to British novelist, Martin Amis, the effort to create good literature involves engaging in a war against cliches.

Phrases like “the heat was stifling” or “she rummaged through her handbag” kill literature.

Think of cliches that have become novelties in pop culture like:

Amis, who teaches Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, says that these are “heard phrases.” Cliches are “heard writing,” “heard thinking,” “heard feeling.”

Writing isn’t about taking a cliche and rewording it with new synonyms, although many writers do that. Writing is about perspective – being true to what you observe and putting your perceptions into clear, truthful, descriptive words. There are no original ideas, but there are a million new ways of looking at the same old ideas. Good writing is a search for freshness – fresh perspective, having something unique to say.

Writing is not about decorating paragraphs with rumble and glitter. Rather, writing is giving your story song – choosing the words which become the music on which your story will sing.

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Don’t have time to re-read the post? Let me sum up.

* The human brain, left unchecked, runs on autopilot – which is basically as effective as letting wild buffalo drive your life wagon.
* Hooking your wagon to a team of well-broken horses is much safer, more effective, and more likely to get you to your desired destination in one piece.

A few years I read Change Your Brain Change Your Life by Dr. Daniel Amen. It was the first time I’d become conscious of the power of my untamed thoughts. About this same time a media phenomenon called “The Secret” entered the scene. The Secret is a documentary and book project coordinated by Rhonda Byrne which basically put into modern packaging age-old teachings about the power of thought. For example:

A run-away brain needs to be broken and trained just like a wild horse. This requires time, patience, and PRACTICE. (Some thick padding in your backseat is also helpful.)

One of the most useful tools I’ve found to reign in my run-away thoughts is the practice of gratitude. Gratitude is powerful.

When I feel grateful for the time I have, I find that I have more time.
When I feel grateful for a stroke of good luck that has come my way, I inevitably run into more good luck.
When I feel grateful that I am who I am, that I am enough, that I have enough and I can be enough, I find miraculously that I receive more, I’m able to do more, and I can be more. Whenever I practice gratitude, it’s like the universe reveals an untapped reservoir of goodness that it’s been saving especially for me.

Now, when I say, “practice gratitude,” I mean really PRACTICE.

I hated the piano lesson when my teacher passed off my favorite song and moved me on to a new, foreign piece of music to learn. I would put off opening the music for days and continue to play my old favorite over and over again. The “practicing” stage felt awkward and uncomfortable. I plunked through choppy notes that felt like a foreign language and sounded nothing like music. Little by little, with practice, the notes would begin to fit more comfortably under my fingers until they became a part of me. Over time, I could play the music from my soul like it was a natural part of me and not foreign chords plunked from a page of sheet music.

Practicing gratitude doesn’t feel natural at first. It can feel forced, insincere, even fake. Any mastered skill feels awkward at first. No NBA star was able to make a flawless, smooth, and beautifully executed slam dunk when they started. They looked like a tangled flurry of teenage legs and arms flopping uncoordinated in multiple directions, until, with practice, they found their rhythm.