“You have considerable power to construct self-helping thoughts, feelings and actions as well as to construct self-defeating behaviors. You have the ability, if you use it, to choose healthy instead of unhealthy thinking, feeling and acting.” -Albert Ellis

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Our emotions and our actions are often ruled by our thoughts. If we think negative or limiting things, we feel negative emotions or behave in negative ways that reinforce what our mind believes to be true.

For most humans, at some point in most of our lives, we picked up a negative or limiting belief about ourselves or the world. These beliefs could have been formed by something someone told us. They could have been formed by our perception of how other people acted towards us. Or they could have been formed by our own perception of ourselves.

Regardless of where the belief comes from, replacing it with a healthier one is imperative to our mental health.

A person who has reaffirming, positive beliefs about themselves and the world lives uninhibited by fear of failure or success. They feel content and happy about who they are. They are energized to take action on their goals, dreams, and live out their purpose in life.

Doesn’t that sound like a great place to be?

You too can be a person who has self-helping thoughts.

How do we do this? Well, a lot of people will tell you that you need to replace your negative automatic thought with a positive one. The problem is that you can’t jump directly from having a negative automatic thought to a positive one. As much as you’ll try positive affirmations, your mind has to believe they could be true in order to adapt them as your new belief.

Here’s an example:
Negative belief- “I fail at anything important”
Positive belief you want to have- “I am successful and have accomplished great things.“

You can see how jumping directly from one belief to the other isn’t probable because your mind can’t accept any truth in the positive belief when it is the opposite of what it already believes to be true (your negative belief).

If you have limiting beliefs, you often need to create a ladder in order to replace it with a positive belief.

A ladder is the process of slowly replacing a negative automatic thought with a positive one by creating steps with less drastic thought changes in between each step.

Here’s what a ladder might look like:
Negative belief- “I fail at anything important”
Step 1- “I have failed before, but I’ve learned a lot with each failure”
Step 2- “I have failed before, but I’ve also had successes” (list 3 successes no matter how small they may seem)
Step 3- “I have had successes like x, y, z (list 3 successes). And where I did not succeed, I learned something that will help me succeed next time.”
Step 4- “I am successful in many things and where I did not succeed, I learned something that will help me succeed next time.”
Positive belief- “I am successful and have accomplished great things.”

The key to the ladder is that each step is a small one. One that your mind can rationally believe to replace the one before it.

You do not move on to the next step until your automatic thought, the one you believe to be true without considering it, is the step your on. If your automatic thought is still the thought from the previous step, spend more time in your current step.

Each time your negative or limiting automatic thought crosses your mind, you mentally (or out loud!) tell yourself “No!” and then repeat the thought of the current step you’re on.

Once the new thought becomes your automatic thought, you can move on to the next step in your ladder.

The amount of time you’ll spend on each step depends on how believable the thoughts in your steps are and how diligently you correct your automatic thought with the thoughts of the current step EVERY time the automatic thought occurs.

You might spend 1 month on step 1 and only 1 week on step 4. You never move on to the next step until you’ve truly replaced your automatic thought.

Using the ladder means you’ll have slower progress. But slow progress= successful, long-term change in beliefs.

Little by little, your thoughts will start to transform.

And that transformation of your thoughts can change your life in the best ways.

Once you’ve successfully changed one self-defeating automatic thought, you can move on to the next. Until your mind becomes the loveliest place filled with self-affirming and helping beliefs that encourage you to live fully, joyfully, and free from self-doubt.

This is your invitation, friend. Make a change in your thoughts and in your life. You deserve it.

If you need help identifying which thoughts of yours may be self-defeating, limiting, or negative, check out this helpful blog post next.

Sending so much love your way, Laura

Mental Health