High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 394: Why We All Have Negative Thoughts

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” William James  We all experience automatic negative thoughts because our brain’s role is to keep us safe, not to help us perform well or be happy. To reduce our automatic negative thinking, we must notice our thoughts. Remember you shouldn’t believe everything you hear in your own mind! Start today and reduce my negativity so you can thrive and reach your best more often.     This Week’s Power Phrase: “ I reduce my ANTs so I can reach my fullest potential. I will not believe everything I think!”  

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best, so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. Dr. Sindra Kampoff joins us and we are talking about negative thoughts. Sindra, how are you

doing? I'm doing great. How are you doing, Lisa? Well, good. I'm not having any negative thoughts this morning, but that's our topic. So why don't you start us off with a quote? I like this quote by William James. He said, the greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. Choosing your thoughts and maybe not choosing negative ones. So what inspired the topic? Well, Lisa, I deliver a lot of different keynotes and trainings to a wide variety of groups. And at the end, I always ask, what was the topic that was really helpful for you? What was the most helpful topic. And many times it's this discussion about negative thoughts. And I think, especially during COVID right now, that there's a

lot of changes in our lives. It's really easy to be overwhelmed by stress or fear and anxiety. And I'm hopeful that today's topic will help. A lot of times we hear in the news about how high stress is right now. And we know that's not good for us, but why are our thoughts so important? Well, our thoughts are important because they really drive everything we do. They determine how we interact with others, how we feel about ourselves, how we act in general, and our thoughts lead to emotions and they lead to actions. And ultimately, those actions lead to our habits. So, you know, just our thoughts determine really who we are and what we do. And I was reading this study by a neuroscientist. Her name is Caroline Leaf, and she said that between 75 and 98% of mental, behavioral, and physical illnesses come from our

thoughts. So just making sure our thoughts are really helping us instead. Why do we have those thoughts that don't help us? Like, why do we have all those negative thoughts that creep in? Well, I'd first say everyone has negative thoughts. And because our brain is really here to keep us safe, it's not here to help us be happy or be a peak performer. And I first read about this concept called automatic negative thoughts, and we're going to call these ANTS for short, from a book called Daniel Amon's book called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. And when I first read about

this concept, it was really life changing for me, because I was the only I thought I was the only one who had automatic negative thoughts, right. But everyone does. I think that's really empowering to know that everybody has negative thoughts. But the key is, is we don't want to let our negativity grow, because they take over our don't want to let our negativity grow because they take over our emotions and our body and our actions. And so really noticing these automatic negative thoughts is the first step in just controlling our mind. So can you give us an example of an automatic negative thought that we might have? Yes. One example is when we focus on the negative in a situation. In my book,, Beyond Good, I talk about nine different examples of ant.

But focusing on the negative means that we're only focused on the bad, not on the good. So let's say, for example, you get feedback from a boss, and there's two comments that are negative. You're only focusing on those. Or maybe right now you're only focusing on the negative that can come from COVID. So this type of thinking really doesn't lead

to giving us energy to tackle really tough situations. on the negative that can come from COVID. So this type of thinking really doesn't lead to giving us energy to tackle really tough situations. It doesn't allow us to thrive in general, Lisa. Zendra, can you give us some other examples of automatic negative thoughts? Sure. So two quick other examples would be like personalization. And that's where we believe negative events have personal meaning. So we take things personally. But we know that, you know, people don't do things because of us. They do things because of them. Or we blame.

That's another example when we blame someone else for our problems or a situation. And when we do that, we really are powerless to change. So really, the point of today is really to reach your potential, we have to recognize we shouldn't, we shouldn't believe everything that we think or hear in our own mind. Don't believe everything that you tell yourself all the time. How do you summarize today? So I would say, you know, we all experience automatic negative thoughts because our brain's role is really to keep us safe, not to help us perform well or be happy. So to reduce your automatic negative

thinking, we first need to notice our thoughts. And then remember, you shouldn't believe everything you hear in your own mind. So I'm going to encourage everyone to start today reducing that negativity so we can all thrive more and reach our best more often. What's our power phrase to get us through the week? I reduce my ants so I can reach my fullest potential. I will not believe everything I think. All right. Cinder, you mentioned that you do keynotes and you mentioned your book.

What's a good way to get in touch with you to learn more? Yeah. Anybody who's interested can go to Dr. Cinder, so D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com, and my book, Beyond Grits, there, and information about training for keynotes is there as well. Dr. Cinder Kampoff, thank you so much. Thanks, Lisa. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump.

Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Cinder for show notes. And to join my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.