|
 To
recap on what we’ve covered so far on controlling emotional eating, the
first step was to take ownership of your reactions. Step Two is
resolve, rather than react to, life’s problems and Step Three is to
decelerate your thinking.
This month, the final step is no. 4: Challenge and
restructure your automatic thoughts.
After you’ve identified what is going on in your mind by
decelerating your thinking, work to change it. If you now understand
that emotional pain stems from your thoughts, then you must correct the
errors in your thinking. By overriding your mental conditioning, you
can reprogram yourself and better manage your emotional life. You do
this is by asking yourself four important questions relating to those
automatic thoughts.
- Are they true?
- Do they serve your best
interests?
- Do they advance and
protect your health?
- Do they help you
achieve your weight-management goals?
When you start to test these automatic thoughts against
reality, your beliefs and attitudes will begin to change in rather a
short time, regardless of how long-standing they are. By using this
line of questioning on your thoughts and beliefs – testing them against
reality – you can change your perceptions, judgements and your
evaluations of yourself. Until you stop and analyse your internal
reactions, you will go on believing them and continuing to deal with
these emotions that are so much at war with your highest self. So the
paramount issue for you is that you have to understand how you work,
from the inside out and what makes you feel that way you feel.
To be liberated from the control of negative emotions,
you’ll need to continue to do a fair amount of the introspection I’ve
been describing. You have to see the truth in the fact that you are
responsible for upsetting yourself. It is wrong to continue in the
belief that something or someone is causing your to feel emotions you
do not want to feel. You can’t change other people or other conditions,
you can only change your reactions to them.
That’s why you’ll have to identify the irrational
thoughts and beliefs that you continually and automatically send
yourself. And you will have to sort through these messages, restructure
them and replace them with authentic responses that correct your
high-speed thinking.
When something sparking an emotional response arises,
simply say to yourself, “I will control what attitude I take towards
this situation. I have the power to choose my perceptions and my
reactions. And I will exercise this power of choice in every circumstance,
every day of my life.”
|
