I’m on the airplane flying home from Austin and am happy to report that there is a gray-haired man behind me who does not kick. :-) So nice! But back to strategies. . . When you find yourself writing a negative story about a situation, you are generating unnecessary pain and driving the Spirit right out of your life. The strategies we are talking about are designed to stop the negative story writing so that we can replace them with positive stories.
Brigham Young once said, “When you are tempted, buffeted, and step out of the way inadvertently; when you are overtaken in a fault, or commit an overt act unthinkingly; when you are full of evil passion, and wish to yield to it, then stop and let the spirit, which God has put into your tabernacles, take the lead. If you do that, I will promise that you will overcome all evil, and obtain eternal lives. But many, very many, let the spirit yield to the body, and are overcome and destroyed” (Discourses of Brigham Young, selected and arranged by John A. Widtsoe, p.70).
President Young is talking here about sin, but the beginning of all sin is negative thoughts. So if we can stop the negative thoughts and change them to positive thoughts, our actions will always be positive. The key is to find the strategies that work for us and then learn to use them.
So the second strategy (the first was Anchoring) is that whenever you find yourself writing a negative story imagine this STOP sign in your head or make a picture of a an actual stop sign and put it in a place where it can remind you such as a mirror or in your purse--anyplace you can find it fast or see it often. Then use the mental or actual picture to help you stop and rewrite negative stories.
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