The Inner Critic Advantage: Making Peace With the Noise in Your Head<\/em><\/a> by Andrea Patten now on Amazon.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lately, whenever I start to beat up on myself for struggling with a new skill, attitude or behavior, I think about ANTS. \u00a0Not ‘ants’ but “ANTS” — Automatic Negative Thoughts — my favorite chapter\u00a0in Jack Canfield’s book The Success Principles. It always reminds me of the incredible women with whom I shared it. When I first read it, I was working with women in pretty dire straights — parole, probation, addiction, domestic violence, homelessness — \u00a0these ladies were living with some ANTS that were going to be\u00a0tough to exterminate. [Tweet “These ladies were living with some pretty big ANTS”] Applying a little PMA — positive mental attitude — was not going to work. \u00a0In those circumstances looking in a\u00a0mirror to say “I love myself” brought about immediate and powerful rejection of the\u00a0thought: recent history told\u00a0them it was simply not true. We needed to find a way to honor and respect that so we started with statements they could accept, affirmations like “I’m not as messed up as I was yesterday.” The parolees and I moved on to brain biology and\u00a0\u00a0bike riding. They learned the ability to form conscious thought was millions of times newer than all those involuntary and semi-voluntary impulses. \u00a0They pictured the brain as a favorite piece of fruit, with higher functions taking up only as much space as the peel. The image helped us all understand why remaining realistically hopeful was so much hard work. [Tweet “…helped us understand why remaining hopeful was so much work”] And bike riding? \u00a0Most could related to the learning process: it took every ounce of concentration we\u00a0had to coordinate pushing off, balancing, pedaling, steering and not crashing. \u00a0The \u2018orange peel\u2019 (conscious thinking space) was busy\u2026. a little chaotic, perhaps. Before long, with some practice, you just got on your bike and went places. The task called \u201clearning to ride a bike\u201d was filed somewhere in the storage (less conscious) part of your brain, able to move freely between \u201cdeliberate\u201d and \u201cfairly automatic\u201d. Most of the time, the process serves us well.\u00a0 Can you imagine how overwhelming day-to-day activities\u00a0 would be if we had to apply the \u201clearning to ride a bike\u201d level awareness to everything we do? \u00a0That’s pretty much what they were up against. We visualized all sorts of ways to get rid of imaginary ants: some of the women used a vacuum cleaner or a flame-thrower while others invited ANTS\u00a0to leave by following\u00a0trails of sugar or honey. \u00a0We laughed and celebrated creativity, humor and imagination. \u00a0Gradually, they became willing to practice noticing small positives like being grateful to be housed at\u00a0an addiction treatment center rather than\u00a0in jail. \u00a0To be at least physically safe and distant\u00a0from batterers. \u00a0To appreciate whatever level of health and life they had left. To begin to trust that change is possible. I am grateful. \u00a0Sometimes when I’m struggling to be a friend to myself I think of these ladies, laugh and go on to do the next right thing. If I keep trying, it will get easier. ## Ready to move on from ANTS to tackle that pesky Inner Critic? Look for The Inner Critic Advantage: Making Peace With the Noise in Your Head by Andrea Patten now on Amazon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inner-critic-2","category-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"ants\"](\"http:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/file000132599156.jpg\")
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