With life more overwhelming than ever it has never been more important to recognise yourself as you are, right now. To be grateful, to celebrate your individual story and applaud how far you’ve come.
Consistently we face the pressures of striving for ‘new/next/better’ and yet we don’t take the time to truly honour that today is where it’s at and all we have is right now. Self-Celebration directly tackles this. Self-Celebration is celebrating the person you are now; not your future self or not the person you wish you could be. It is about accepting, encouraging and empowering yourself in this moment. And you can celebrate who you are, anytime or any place and for any reason. Self-Celebration opens up the potential for what we allow ourselves to honour and therefore how we experience our lives. WHAT IT IS…
WHAT IT IS NOT:
Through all of your challenges and successes, I invite you to Stop. Breathe. Feel. and to give yourself credit. See, it is not just the “big” things that you can honour, it’s every step you take in your journey. This is what celebrating yourself is all about– slowing down, noticing your experiences, and acknowledging yourself. Life can feel like a whole bunch of to-do lists and deadlines and requirements. But, you have the opportunity to witness yourself and the incredible journey you are on. This is how you begin to celebrate yourself! When you pause and check-in, you’ll start to recognise the steps you’ve taken over the last day or week or year to get where you are at this moment. There is so much power and strength in naming! Naming the progress you’ve made, the skills you’ve learned, the habits you’ve formed, and so on. While there are no right or wrong ways to celebrate yourself, I recommend doing it often and consistently. This practice will support you in developing awareness, gratitude, and self-love.
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Throughout September FD Consultants want to highlight the impact of negative thinking, which often gets activated when we are stressed. In this week’s blog we look at a mindfulness approach to letting go of negative thoughts which entails accepting the presence of these thoughts, and, as best you can, simply letting go of them. It is easy to get swept away by our thoughts, especially in the face of strong emotions. We get stuck ruminating and dwelling about the past, filled with guilt or regret. Our minds start racing and we cannot stop worrying about the future and imagining all the things that could go wrong. Or we replay conversations repeatedly in our heads, trying to make sense of them or figure out what we could have said differently. When our minds get going like this, not only is it exhausting; these patterns of thinking tend to make us feel bad, intensifying the emotions we are already feeling and generating additional negative emotions as well. Because this experience is so unpleasant, it is natural to want these thoughts to stop, and to be able to prevent yourself from even having them in the first place. We often wind up trying to make these thoughts go away and shut them out completely. But just like we cannot control our emotions or suppress our emotions, neither can we control or suppress our thoughts. So, what can we do when our thoughts start racing, we get stuck ruminating, or we just cannot quiet down our minds? One way of approaching negative and disruptive thinking is to examine our thoughts and see if there are some alternative ways of thinking about the situation. One approach is to bring mindfulness to our thoughts and learn how to just let go of them. “We do not need to fight with thoughts or struggle against them or judge them. Rather, we can simply choose not to follow the thoughts once we are aware that they have arisen,” write Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, John D. Teasdale and Jon Kabatt-Zinn in their book The Mindful Way Through Depression, about the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) approach to depression. Mindfully letting go of thoughts is something we learn to do when we meditate. Many people think meditation involves having a blank mind completely void of any thoughts. However, in mindfulness meditation, the idea is not to shut out thoughts altogether, but simply to not allow yourself to get carried away by your thoughts. In mindfulness meditation of the breath, for example, we bring our attention to our breath, and try, as best we can, to keep our attention focused on our breath. Despite our intentions, our mind inevitably does wander from the breath, and we start thinking. For a guided meditation please click here When this happens, we simply acknowledge that our attention has wandered to our thoughts, and then let go of those thoughts and return our attention to our breath. And when our mind wanders again and we start thinking about something else, once again we acknowledge our thoughts, let go of them, and return our attention to our breath. Just as we learn to repeatedly let go of our thoughts and return our attention to our breath when we meditate, we can do the same thing as we go about our everyday life. When we practice letting go of thoughts in everyday life, we don’t always need to return our attention to the breath (though taking a breathing time out or returning to the breath for a few moments is always a great way to relieve stress). Instead, we can let go of a thought and return our attention to the work we were doing, or the book we were reading, or the person we were talking to, or whatever else we were doing when our thoughts began to steal our attention. Another way we can let go of a thought is to refocus our attention from our thoughts to our senses: the taste of the food we’re eating, the sound of the music we’re listening to; the sights around us; or the sensations of our feet striking the ground as we walk. Letting go of thoughts is as simple as acknowledging that our mind is off thinking about something other than the present moment, and then allowing that thought to pass out of our mind as we return our attention to whatever it is we are doing and whatever is going on in the present. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Please do contact us at [email protected] if you require our psychological support services, either as an individual or organisation. Throughout September FD Consultants want to highlight the impact of negative thinking, which often gets activated when we are stressed. In this week’s blog we look at a cognitive therapy (When we’re feeling distressed about something or going through a difficult emotional experience it can feel like our thoughts are running out of control. Our minds start racing and we find ourselves dwelling in the past and worrying about the future. When we’re feeling distressed about something or going through a difficult emotional experience it can feel like our thoughts are running out of control. Our minds start racing and we find ourselves dwelling in the past and worrying about the future. At times, our thoughts can become so powerful and consuming that it is difficult to focus on anything else. Reading, being productive at work, or even just carrying on a conversation seems impossible. The thoughts become so persistent that nothing can distract us from them and nothing else can hold our attention, and it can feel like there isn’t anything we can do to slow down these thoughts or get some peace of mind. Because it is natural to want thoughts like these to go away and to have some control over what is going on inside our heads, we often wind up trying to will these thoughts away and shut them out completely. But just like we cannot control our emotions, nor suppress our emotions, neither can we control or suppress our thoughts. Usually the more we fight our thoughts and try to block them out or force them to go away, the stronger we make them and the more resolute they become. However, when our thoughts start racing, we get stuck ruminating, or we just cannot quiet down our minds, there are a few strategies we use to calm our thinking. A cognitive therapy (CBT) approach to calming our thoughts entails examining and challenging the thoughts we are having to find some alternative ways of thinking about the situation. This can involve things such as positive reappraisal; or reframing a negative event in a more positive light; or putting things into perspective and considering the negative event or emotion in a broader context that makes it easier to manage. In cognitive therapy we learn to assess negative thoughts when they arise, rather than taking them for granted as being true, and considering if there might be other ways of looking at a situation. Asking yourself some of the following questions, grouped below into three categories, can help you to reframe a distressing situation and see it in a different light. By taking the time to ask these questions, you can disrupt the thinking-in-circles pattern that typically occurs when we allow negative thinking to go unchallenged. Asking these questions gives you the opportunity to step back from your thoughts a little, slow down your mind, and consider things from a fresher and calmer perspective. What are the facts?
Are there any other possible explanations?
What can I do to help me deal with the situation?
Once you are able to gain a broader perspective, things tend not to be as overwhelming, your mind quiets down, and you can start to see things more clearly. Once you have some clarity, then you can find concrete ways to deal with whatever is troubling you. Often it helps to write out your answers to these questions, as writing thoughts down helps get them out of your head and slow down your mind. And seeing the answers written out in front of you can make them sink in and seem more real than if they are just more thoughts added to whatever is going on in your mind already. This technique can be particularly helpful when you’re worrying a lot. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Please do contact us at [email protected] if you require our psychological support services, either as an individual or organisation. Throughout September FD Consultants want to highlight the impact of negative thinking, which often gets activated when we are stressed. In this week’s blog we focus on how to challenge negative thinking and give suggestions on how to stop this cycle of self-depreciation. Our negative thoughts can seem scary or intimidating, but they can be tackled and redirected with a little understanding. Once you have learned how to identify your manner and patterns of negative thinking, you can start to reframe those thoughts by challenging them and the beliefs that reinforce them.
Putting it all together… It’s hard to reframe our negative thoughts and emotions, but it’s not impossible. By taking the time to learn about who we are and what we want from life, we can unlock the skills that we need to redirect our negative thoughts and channel them into positive energies. Learn to understand your negative thinking and the shape your self-chat takes. Spend time with these thoughts and come up with healthy ways you can reshape them into attitudes and beliefs that are more in line with who you are at a core level. Reframe your negative thinking and learn how to use it for good by asking yourself the tough questions and having the courage to take charge of your own happiness. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Please do contact us at [email protected] if you require our psychological support services, either as an individual or organisation. Throughout September FD Consultants want to highlight the impact of negative thinking, which often gets activated when we are stressed. In this week’s blog we focus on where negative thoughts come from and the types of negative thinking people experience. Improving the quality of your life often starts with reframing and reshaping the way you view yourself and the world. No matter how hard we try to avoid them, negative thoughts are everywhere, just waiting to lead us off track and distract us. Negative thinking can make it hard for us to operate in day-to-day life or make the big decisions that really matter. If you want to find your way back to happiness again, you have to learn how to challenge and replace your negative thoughts and emotions. Constant negative thinking (also known as rumination) is not healthy, and overcoming it is a process that takes a conscious awareness and a committed effort. Negative or unwanted thoughts undermine your self-confidence and leave you plagued with insecurities. Where do negative thoughts come from? Negative thinking is fear-based, meaning it stems from our insecurities and those things in life which wounded us or made us hesitant. We are born as a blank canvas and form our beliefs and opinions over time, based on the examples set by our caretakers and the experiences that comprise our lives. All these things come together to form the foundation of how we interact with the world, and it is through these experiences that we form our ideas of self and ability. Negative thinking can develop in a lot of secret and hidden parts of ourselves, but it’s our responsibility to dig deep and try to understand where it comes from. While our experiences can contribute to our negative patterns of thinking, the quality and state of brain can contribute as well, hindering our positivity with mental illnesses like depression and anxiety. The types of negative thinking. Negative thinking is also referred to as cognitive distortion. These cognitive distortions are simply the ways in which our mind convinces us of something that is not quite true. These inaccurate thoughts reinforce our negative thinking and keep us stuck. To overcome them, you must understand them.
For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Please do contact us at [email protected] if you require our psychological support services, either as an individual or organisation. |
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