I'm getting oldI can't stand it!
My back is killing me
This is absolutely the last straw!
This piece of cheesecake will add 5 pounds to my hips
If he does that one more time, I'm going to shove this laundry up his...
We lie to ourselves all day long. I tell myself impossible fibs, outright untruths, most of which I am unaware of. Why? Why with a perfectly splendid mind, would I use it in this fashion? That is a whole other topic. But if this sounds familiar, the same principle that works on positive affirmations, I believe, operates in the cellular activation of negative messages. Well, two things happening, really.
1. It is a lie. Always. Almost any statement I make extolling my limitations is a lie. This I suspect creates a dissonance within my system related to my intention to be truthful. That is different from the normal cognitive dissonance which an affirmation creates.
2. It is an Affirmation because it is declarative. It states something as a given. Not a question, not a possible scenario, not 'I wonder if'. Every statement I make to myself gets run through the truth filter to determine whether something has to change to make it so.
All affirmations work on the principle of cognitive dissonance, I seem to remember from Psychology 101. There is a part of our mind that is like the 'go-fer'. If we say to ourselves, cheeseburger for lunch, the mind starts unraveling that into a plan. If I say my positive affirmations...the world is a safe and loving place, for example, then, supposedly, the primitive brain will begin to arrange my actions and perceptions to make that true. The mind has two contradictory pieces of info and tries to reconcile them. It can't stand the dissonance. Like a bad chord. Aaaaah, stop that noise.
So when I say, my back is killing me, who is to say what takes place in there. What if that reptilian brain doesn't question my logic and go, "Yo, does not compute, dingbat". What if cognitive dissonance demands a specific response as in MAKE IT SO. Then I think I better question some of those lies I tell myself.
Here is my favorite. I was lost in the woods about 10 years ago (still comes up on google). My hiking partner and I had bushwhacked over a couple, up-hill miles of the worst country I had ever come across. Our day hike near Kintla Lake gone horribly wrong. Me in shorts and a tank top going over fallen trees that were scattered like pic up stix (remember that game). We had been at it 3 hours and hadn't found the trail. As we sat on a log panting, me examining my bloody legs. I was dizzy from exhaustion. I thought, I'm toast...can't walk another step.
Well, guess what ? Six and a half hours and 15 miles later, including a close shave with grizzlies, I was still hoofing it. The next morning when search & rescue caught up to me, I had spent the night by my fire, watching for predators with a sharpened stick, floated down the North Fork (think ice) on my day pack, followed countless dead end trails. No, I had such a monumental 'second wind' that it makes me laugh now when I tell myself I'm all in, all exhausted, couldn't do another step!!
So whether those negative affirmations encourage the universe to play tricks on us, or our polarized brain to make it so, it is worth tuning in on the internal monologue. It might be a 'to do' list you don't want your brain to take on. Also, those negative affirmations may have more to do with our physical well being than we could ever know. Experiment freely. It's your body.
1. It is a lie. Always. Almost any statement I make extolling my limitations is a lie. This I suspect creates a dissonance within my system related to my intention to be truthful. That is different from the normal cognitive dissonance which an affirmation creates.
2. It is an Affirmation because it is declarative. It states something as a given. Not a question, not a possible scenario, not 'I wonder if'. Every statement I make to myself gets run through the truth filter to determine whether something has to change to make it so.
All affirmations work on the principle of cognitive dissonance, I seem to remember from Psychology 101. There is a part of our mind that is like the 'go-fer'. If we say to ourselves, cheeseburger for lunch, the mind starts unraveling that into a plan. If I say my positive affirmations...the world is a safe and loving place, for example, then, supposedly, the primitive brain will begin to arrange my actions and perceptions to make that true. The mind has two contradictory pieces of info and tries to reconcile them. It can't stand the dissonance. Like a bad chord. Aaaaah, stop that noise.So when I say, my back is killing me, who is to say what takes place in there. What if that reptilian brain doesn't question my logic and go, "Yo, does not compute, dingbat". What if cognitive dissonance demands a specific response as in MAKE IT SO. Then I think I better question some of those lies I tell myself.
Here is my favorite. I was lost in the woods about 10 years ago (still comes up on google). My hiking partner and I had bushwhacked over a couple, up-hill miles of the worst country I had ever come across. Our day hike near Kintla Lake gone horribly wrong. Me in shorts and a tank top going over fallen trees that were scattered like pic up stix (remember that game). We had been at it 3 hours and hadn't found the trail. As we sat on a log panting, me examining my bloody legs. I was dizzy from exhaustion. I thought, I'm toast...can't walk another step.
Well, guess what ? Six and a half hours and 15 miles later, including a close shave with grizzlies, I was still hoofing it. The next morning when search & rescue caught up to me, I had spent the night by my fire, watching for predators with a sharpened stick, floated down the North Fork (think ice) on my day pack, followed countless dead end trails. No, I had such a monumental 'second wind' that it makes me laugh now when I tell myself I'm all in, all exhausted, couldn't do another step!!
So whether those negative affirmations encourage the universe to play tricks on us, or our polarized brain to make it so, it is worth tuning in on the internal monologue. It might be a 'to do' list you don't want your brain to take on. Also, those negative affirmations may have more to do with our physical well being than we could ever know. Experiment freely. It's your body.
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