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Retrain Your Brain: 4 Steps to Overcome Negative Thoughts
Discover why you do things against your own best interest and how to change it.
Sol TV
November 07, 2024
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🔧 How to Change Your Brain
đź“š TL/DR: The Cognitive Model
🧠Sol Bites: 4 Steps to Retrain Your Brain
đź’Ş Framework to Crush Negative Thoughts
🎥 Video Bite: Romina Kwong on Negative Thoughts
🌟 Words of Wisdom
Have you ever wondered why we do things against our own best interests? It’s because our brains can be intelligent and irrational at the same time—and that can lead to having emotions that contradict our actions. For example, a lot of people have a fear of sharks despite knowing that there is a 1 in 11.5 million chance of being attacked by one. There are also a lot of us who have unhealthy habits when we know better.
Using a tool called the Cognitive Model from behavioral psychology, we can start to understand these paradoxes and retrain our brains for better results.
TL;DR: The Cognitive Model
Our brains can trick us into having irrational fears or unhelpful habits. The Cognitive Model, which is designed to help people identify, test, and correct distorted thoughts, has four parts: Event → Interpretation → Emotion → Response. When we change our responses, we can teach our brains to adopt healthier beliefs.
Sol Bites: 4 Steps to Retrain Your Brain
1) Identify Automatic Negative Reactions: Notice when your responses to events create a negative interpretation—like getting angry at a driver who cuts you off, or avoiding dogs because of a scary past experience.
2) Challenge Negative Beliefs: When your brain suggests a fear-driven response (like tailgating the car because you are so angry), pause. Instead of acting on those feelings immediately, question and test those beliefs by acting differently that you have in the past.
3) Practice New Responses: Consistently apply new, deliberate responses that counteract old negative habits. For example, if you’re afraid of dogs, spending time around dogs can teach your brain that they’re not always dangerous.
4) Tolerate Discomfort: Know that change will feel uncomfortable. Sitting with that discomfort creates space for your brain to learn and adapt. Over time, the discomfort will lessen.
Our brains are wonderfully clever and often frustratingly wrong. By using the Cognitive Model, you can see how your thoughts lead to emotions and actions—and where you’ve gone wrong. Through deliberate practice and tolerance of temporary discomfort, you can rewire the way you respond to things and teach your brain healthier beliefs. Then you will be able to be guided by what serves you and not be led by emotions that may not align with your values and deepest desires.
Discover sneaky ways your brain creates negative thoughts and learn how to outsmart it.
Video Bite
Sol TV Creator Romina Kwong shares a framework STOP to combat negative feelings. Watch the full video here.
Words of Wisdom
The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.
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Mona & The Sol TV Team ❤️
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