So I like to teach people practical tools that they can actually bring into their day to help them with stress and to really be able to help with both some of those more short-term stressors that arise in the course of the day,
But also to help with some of those really that more long-term chronic stress that many of us struggle with.
And so we already have talked about the flashlight as one tool to really help bring awareness to whatever's there.
And I feel like that is a primary and overarching tool that really.
.
.
Runs into all the other ones but I want to talk about another tool that I call the diet And this one is not probably the diet you're thinking of.
It's not what you feed yourself every day.
Although there certainly is some good research on what we put into our bodies can affect our wellbeing.
But the kind of diet that I'm talking about is the diet of thoughts that we feed ourself all day long.
It's estimated that we have between 50,
000 and 70,
000 thoughts a day.
And if you really stop and think about that,
It's a pretty astounding number.
And a lot of those thoughts,
Most of those thoughts,
Go under the surface of our consciousness.
So we're not really paying attention to what we're saying to ourselves all day long.
Another way I think about it is as if we have this constant narrator in our head.
My new book that's coming out,
I talk about this noisy person at the movie theater.
You're trying to just sit and enjoy your movie to watch your movie,
But you got this guy sitting next to you and it's this constant chatter going on.
Can you believe what's happening?
Oh my God.
Oh,
That's going to be a disaster.
That is so stupid.
I can't believe she did that.
What is going on?
You've got this voice next to you.
You're just trying to watch the movie and there's this constant narration going on.
But our brains have this kind of constant narration.
Where we have this chatter going on in the background.
And when we begin to pay attention to the things we're saying to ourselves,
Often they're very critical,
They can be distorted,
They can be inaccurate,
Or they can just not be helpful for whatever the circumstances that we're facing.
So the idea of the diet is to really begin to feed ourselves a healthier diet,
A more nourishing and nurturing diet,
And a more accurate diet of thoughts that can really help us with whatever challenges we are facing and to be able to.
.
.
Allow us to face these situations with greater resilience.
So I can give an example maybe to see if this makes a little bit more sense.
But if you imagine that there's a circumstance that occurs and we can use the circumstance of a person getting fired from their job.
And so in and of itself,
That is an upsetting situation.
And I think probably anybody in that situation would find that challenging.
But then paying attention to the diet of thoughts that a person feeds themselves in that situation.
To kind of see how this might impact their stress.
And so if you think about two people,
Person A and person B,
And person A might say to themselves things like,
This is a disaster.
This is just awful.
This is a personal reflection on me.
People must think that I'm useless.
I'm no good.
I'm a failure.
How am I ever going to find another job?
I don't know what I'm going to do and I don't see a way through this.
So feeding oneself those kinds of thoughts,
You might imagine that that person is going to probably feel a lot of stress.
It's going to be maybe harder to get up the next day and figure out how to proceed.
Person B,
Who's in the exact same circumstances,
Who maybe got fired from the exact same job,
Might have a different diet of thoughts.
And that diet of thoughts might sound something like,
Um,
This is really upsetting.
This is a really challenging situation.
But I recognize that there's a lot of reasons that this may have happened.
And I know that despite the circumstances,
I have a lot of strengths to bring to another company,
To another organization.
And I've been through difficult things before in my life.
And I will find a way to get through this.
I'm going to call on my own inner resources and some of the outer resources that I have around me to find a way to get through this.
And so that is a different diet of thoughts that that person's feeding themselves.
And which person do you imagine is going to experience more stress?
And who's gonna be able to kind of get out there and maybe.
Go at it,
You know,
The next day or the next week.
And so this diet of thoughts that we feed ourselves can be very powerful.
And that's not to minimize the circumstances that we're experiencing.
And a really important piece here is that it's not about Pollyanna thinking.
It's not about feeding ourselves positive thoughts,
Like everything is great,
Everything is fine,
I'm,
You know,
The best person in the world or whatever,
If we don't believe those things,
Because that's not going to serve us.
But it's about looking at the circumstances bringing our awareness to what's happening here and now and to really feed ourselves a more accurate and specific diet of thoughts a lot of times our thinking goes to a place of self-blame such as i'm a failure i'm so stupid and if we can replace that kind of language with thoughts more specific to the circumstances like i'm really upset with myself that i made this particular mistake today at work well that's a lot more workable it's a lot easier to be able to go forward and even think about what might be helpful when you say to yourself yeah i made a mistake today there's some things that i would have liked to do differently and i don't feel so great about it but that's a lot different than i'm a failure which is more of a global attack at the core of our being.
So beginning to pay attention to this diet of thoughts that we feed ourselves really gives us again this choice to be able to Pay attention and feed ourselves something more nourishing and ideally more self-compassionate that can help support whatever we're trying to do.
