Finding Your Ideal Weight Through Your Thoughts 3

MINE = Belongs to Me

TO MINE = TO EXTRACT

In possessing something, we refer to the thing we are possessing as being “MINE”.  I OWN it. It is part of ME. I HAVE it, or in the past tense, I HAD it. When referring to thoughts, how do you associate with them?  We often use words of ownership: “I HAD a thought, I HAVE a thought, I AM thinking, it occurred to ME”…and in cases of intellectual property, thoughts and ideas have the potential to be very lucrative, therefore we can be possessive and protective of them.

While we may “own” our thoughts, they are intangible. We so often get unconsciously lost in a train of thinking, where one thought is connected to the next, and the next, all moving in some direction, seeking a destination, usually trying to solve a “problem” through analysis. Other times our thoughts spiral around and around, and don’t really take us anywhere except a state of anxiety.

Another definition of “mine” is TO EXTRACT (as in ores, coal, etc.).  What you may not realize is that in order to improve your health and weight, we must use this definition of MINE when dealing with our thoughts. While we are not physically extracting them, we can make a choice not to attach to them, not taking ownership of all the negative and damaging thoughts that are so often unconscious and we don’t realize are limiting us. By MINING your thoughts, and not allowing them to be YOU, a very powerful transformation will occur. So how does this work?

The first step is to simply notice what’s going on in that mind of yours. Simple: just observe. When it comes to food, choices about eating, body image, etc. what is your mind saying to you?  I would challenge you to spend the next 3 days watching what’s going on up there, as though you’re an outsider. What’s critical is not to JUDGE what your mind is saying to you (notice I didn’t say what you are saying to yourself, rather what your mind is saying to you)—it’s not “good” or “bad”—it just IS. However, when you realize that your mind is engaged in certain distorted styles of thinking, you can then make a choice to not believe what it is saying.  Likely the mind thinks it’s helping you in some way with these distorted thoughts– to motivate you, or problem solve, but most of the time, we end up ruminating  and it ends up being destructive. Once you choose not to engage in these thoughts, but rather extract them through observation, you will see what I mean. There will be a shift from thoughts that evoke anxiety to a state of peace. You may not even be aware of how a single thought can create a specific physiological reaction, and how that affects your actions, and thus the results that you are wanting to achieve, i.e. to be healthy and fit.

It’s helpful to sit in meditation for at least 5-20 minutes a day and practice watching your thoughts, and training yourself to using this technique throughout your day.

So…what are the distorted styles of thinking in need of mining to be on the lookout for?  The following list was created by Erica Raynor-Horn, a psychotherapist I had the pleasure of teaching a Mindful Eating and Living class with.  Read through these and as you spend the next 3 days as an observer of your thoughts, see what happens when you choose to mine them , or on the contrary, when you choose to engage in them, or own them? How does it make you feel? How does it affect your food choices, hunger levels? Does mining them evoke levels of peace?

Catastrophizing is a style of thinking that increases anxiety. When things are challenging this is the tendency to race ahead and expect disaster. It’s imagining the worst-case scenario and escalating a potential difficulty into a tragedy. You might hear about a problem and start fixating on “what if”: What if this happens to me or my family? What if I don’t lose weight? and expecting that it will.

Blaming: The habit of looking outside yourself and holding other people responsible for your pain or difficulties with your health or weight or turning inwards and blaming yourself. Either way it increases pain and unhappiness.

Personalization: Thinking that everything other people do or say is some kind of reaction to you.  It’s the tendency to take things personally and not be able to step back and see objectively that other people’s actions may or may not be a response to you, or that people may be thinking of your body/appearance a certain way.

The “shoulds” are a rigid set of expectations and rules that are fixed ideas of how things ought to be. This can be damaging, as you may feel guilty and ashamed if you don’t meet your own expectations or break the rules. Equally it can lead to feeling disappointed and resentful of others if they don’t measure up to how things should be.

Mind Reading: A common tendency to assume you know what other people are feeling and why they act the way they do.  Without any evidence to support this assumption you may feel that you just know someone doesn’t like you, is judging or criticizing you or is somehow against you.         

Polarized Thinking: Things are black or white: all good or all bad. There is no middle ground or consideration of both positive and negative aspects. It’s often connected with feeling you have to be perfect or you’re a failure.

Exaggerating the Negative and Discounting the Positive is the habit of downplaying or not acknowledging positive experiences while magnifying the negative ones.  You might notice the word “but” comes between a positive remark and a negative one. For example,“ It’s such a nice day,” is followed by a negative comment such as “but I heard there will be a big storm tomorrow.” Try replacing the word “but” with “and” so the negative doesn’t overwhelm the positive.

Always Being Right: this habit of considering yourself the expert is stressful as it keeps you on guard all the time. You feel you must continually prove that your opinions and actions are correct and that it is unthinkable to be wrong. You will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness.

Expecting Others to Change is the habit of feeling your happiness and fulfillment is dependent on other people changing who they are and how they behave. It’s related to getting stuck in “if only,” thinking.