Getting Out Of Your Head Part 2

I hope and trust you jumped out of bed this morning with Vim and Vigor, looking forward to a new day on Planet Earth. If your European friends Vim and Vigor didn’t stay last night, then I hope you’re pumped up for the day ahead nevertheless.


I’m guessing as somebody that’s committed to continual incremental improvement (or as the Japanese call it, Kaizen) you will have spent every available moment since my last post chanting merrily away to yourself with the new found affirmation that I so kindly gave you.
For people that habitually talk negatively to themselves often the hardest part of remedying the situation is to actually recognize when it’s going on. As I said previously, you’ve had many years practice at self-talk and as such you’re perfect at it. Most of the time it’s even going on without your conscious knowledge, scary though that may seem to the uninitiated.


First and foremost, I’m going to give you the best option bar none for taking back control of your miscreant thoughts. This method is tried and tested and proven for millions (probably hundreds of millions) of people. It’s free, easy to do and has a multitude of benefits. Yep, you’ve guessed it, its meditation. Before you bleat that you can’t do it or it’s for people that smoke pipes, eat tofu and think cows dipped in formaldehyde are strangely erotic, hang with me. To start with, go and read this blog and if you’ve never considered meditation, buy some of the cd’s mentioned at the bottom. Yes I do get paid a whopping great 4% commission by Amazon for sales, but that’s not the reason I promote this stuff. I do it because it works! Meditation can change your life for the better if you allow it to. The absolute worst thing that can happen is nothing, which seeing as it’s nothing you’ll be doing, that won’t come as a great surprise to many people.


As you allow the meditation to chill you to the bone it may be useful to have a short-term trick up your sleeve and I’m the man to give it to you. This is almost as simple as meditation and just as effective.


First things first, you need to start to notice your thoughts. Start be dropping a few post-it notes here and there with something along the lines of “What am I thinking” written on them. Whenever you see one, scan back 5 or 10 minutes in your memory to see what you have been chatting to yourself about. Was it good supportive stuff? In which case brilliant, pat yourself on the back and celebrate with a quick Om. If it was negative stuff, no problem, because you now have an opportunity to change it. Simply back up in your thoughts say “Delete that” to yourself loudly and with authority. When you have done that fill the newly created void with something supportive, kind and helpful. It’s that easy, although you’re probably going to have to do this a few hundred times until it sticks.


Eventually you’ll get to the stage where you notice most of your negative thoughts immediately. Some people like to wear an elastic band round their wrist and they snap it really hard (this acts as a break state) when they notice such a thought.  After that it’s simply a matter of replacing the thought as per previously.


The way I see it, getting out of your head is simply acquiring the ability to impartially observe your own thoughts and actions without judgment. One you do that you can then choose to change them if you so wish. As well as the two methods mentioned above there is also NLP’s perceptual positions that you may find helpful. If you’d like to know more, check out this explanation. Whatever you decide to do have fun and stick without, because it’s really worth the effort.

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