peace

Redirecting Our Mindset: Breaking Free from the Grip of Negative Thinking

/ Debbie Frakes / Leave a comment

“If you hold an anti-war rally, I shall not attend. But if you hold a Pro-Peace rally invite me.”

That is perhaps one of Mother Teresa’s most famous quotes. And it has always stuck with me – that she persistently focused on what she was for: Love and peace. Not what she was against: Hatred and fighting.

Of the 60,000 or so thoughts most of us have in a given day, it’s likely that a good percentage focus on what we’re against. This political party or that one. This issue or that one. This network or that one. This person or that one.  What irritates us, what we hate. And all of this negative thinking gets us into a full-fledged state of anxiety and dis-ease that hangs around like Pigpen’s dust cloud.

If you’re tired of going through your days like this, it’s entirely possibly to change this pattern. And good news! That’s what it is: A pattern we’re running — like a rogue bit of software we’ve programmed into ourselves over years of thinking the same thoughts.

Not saying changing it is easy. If we’ve been thinking negative thoughts for a long time, they’ve figuratively created grooves in our neural networks. Ever tried to ski a cross-country trail and NOT slide into the already laid tracks that have been gone over hundreds of times? Pretty hard to do.

But even if 59,999 of our daily thoughts are negative, we’re not doomed to live our lives this way. Our brains are what neuroscientists call “plastic,” which means they can grow new neurons and neural connections – no matter how old we are.

So how do we do it? Here are some tools to consider:

  • Catch: We can start to be more aware of what’s churning around in our head and notice when we’re hating on something (and maybe even what triggered it).
  • Accept: No need to judge yourself. You wouldn’t condemn your computer for running the software it was programmed with, would you?
  • Replace: Neuroscientists and psychologists are finding that it’s difficult to just erase a thought or stop a behavior without replacing it with something else. So, for example, every time you see a person on TV that makes your blood simmer, you think of someone that you love. Your hubby. Or wife. Mom. Dad. Puppy. You see Hated Face, you think of mom. See Hated Face, think of mom. So you learn to internally pair the two to the point where seeing Hated Face triggers seeing Loved Face.

If you’re bothered by your negative thoughts and want some relief, the invitation is open to giving these steps a try. And let us know how they work.

The Paradox of Setting Boundaries to Free Ourselves

/ Debbie Frakes / Leave a comment

Would you go wash your neighbors’ car in their driveway if it was dirty?

Plant a tree on their lawn?

Paint their house?

Throw a wild party in their backyard?

Of course not.  And if someone did these things to us, we’d feel massively violated. Because there’s a thing called legal property lines that most of us are well aware of and respect (even if we can’t see them).

There’s also something called personal property lines, but many people aren’t aware of them, and some just flat out don’t respect them (even though these boundaries are just as or more important as the ones on file at city hall).

For example, many of us don’t think twice about allowing a friend’s addictive behavior to keep our lives in upheaval because we think always being there means we can fix him. Or we let a coworker’s abuse and bullying denigrate our sense of self-worth because we’re afraid to stand up to her.

In both cases, we’ve let those people bulldoze across our personal property lines. And in a very harmful way.

I love the way author Melody Beattie writes about this subject: “If another person has an addiction, a problem, a feeling or a self-defeating behavior, that is their property, not ours. If someone has acted and experienced a particular consequence, both the behavior and the consequence belong to that person. Other peoples’ choices are their property, not ours.”

Author and podcaster Mel Robbins also covers this topic beautifully in her best-selling new book “The Let Them Theory”:

“When you say Let Them, you’re not giving up or walking away. You’re releasing that grip you have on how things should go and allowing them to unfold the way they will go. You’re freeing yourself.

“You’re making an active, empowered choice to release control you never truly had. You stop giving power to other people and forces outside of you, and you reclaim it for yourself.”

If we’ve let people violate our property lines again and again, it can be hard to suddenly start enforcing our boundaries. To tell that addicted friend: “I love you, but your behavior is unacceptable to me. I can’t help you, and until you get professional help, you can’t be part of my life right now.” To tell that colleague: “Your comments about me are inappropriate and demeaning, and it needs to stop now.”

This is where we take our power back. It’s really necessary for our own emotional, mental and physical health. And it’s so freeing.

What Can We Do in This “Age of Rage?”

/ Debbie Frakes / 2 Comments

“We are living in an age of rage” proclaims a sign in front of a church by our house.

I imagine people driving by this sign and nodding in vehement agreement — especially if their primary inputs on the world come from social media, prime time TV and cable news.

But while those inputs (and their pundits) are pervasive and loud, they don’t give us a true picture of the way things actually are. Because for every dark headline, there are a thousand points of light.

So, what if instead of focusing on our “age of rage,” we all focused on how to “assuage the rage?”

There was a great example of this recently: During the post-game brawl between the University of Michigan and Ohio State football players (and fans), one Michigan and three Ohio State players knelt on the field to pray.

There’s four points of light. Five, if you count the man who videoed the scene and posted it on X.

It reminds me of the “butterfly effect” – the analogy that a butterfly flapping its wings in Australia could cause a tornado in Kansas.

That analogy means ONE action could make a difference. Like choosing prayer over fighting. Not watching the news, refraining from the urge to spank someone on social media, biting back a sharp retort.

While these individual actions may not appear to impact the state of the world, they will impact the state of us.

How can you help assuage the rage today?