Quit Talking to The Snake!
Quit talking to the snake.
I heard the above phrase used by Fr. Justin Brady in a podcast my daughter sent to me this week, he said: quit talking to the snake! It stuck with me so here we go…
Remember Mowgli from Disney’s movie: The Jungle Book?
The above picture is taken from a scene in the movie Jungle Book: you see Kaa, the deceptive snake, slithering up to Mowgli and attempt to get him to fall asleep so he can eat him alive. This scene is a perfect metaphor for what obsessive negative thoughts do to you. By capturing your attention and occupying mental air time, they lull you to sleep, rendering you incapable of tuning into adaptive ideas that would open up solutions, they eat you alive.
Negative behavior walks hand in hand with obsessive thoughts fueled by negative thinking. You can wake up with an intention to have a positive and productive day UNTIL the snake slithers in and plants a negative thought in your mind. You pick it up, look at it, coddle it, feed it breakfast in bed and soon you find yourself irritable, unmotivated and shut down.
Many times an automatic negative thought is linked to a passed traumatic experience: loss of job or relationship, health or financial crises. If there is an element in your day that is linked to the trauma then the snake will win over your thoughts…kick you when you are down using blanket statements like: nothing is going to work out for you; you can’t handle this; it’s a matter of time before the bottom falls out; you’re not smart enough, educated enough, young enough etc.
Stop talking to the snake! Whatever you allow to set up residence on the landscape of your mind grows bigger quickly.
I remember sitting in Psych. 101 listening to a statistic on negative thinking:you can have 9 positive events happen in your day and one negative.Guess which thought you obsess over? Yup, the negative one.
Dr. Daniel Amen,author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, offers some powerful practices to override worry and obsessiveness. Amen speaks about a part of our brains that is responsible for worry and obsessiveness: the cingulate system. It works great and, in our favor, when its high functioning by helping us with: flexibility, adaptability, moving from one idea to the next, the ability to tune into options, go with the “flow” and cooperation.
However, when we have problems with our cingulate system the following snakes will slither into our mental world and spill over into behavior: worry, holding onto past pain, obsessive thoughts and behavior, argumentativeness, oppositional behavior, uncooperativeness, addictive behavior, OCD and road rage will start to crash our party.
Cognitive flexibility is a term that Amen uses to relate to this part of the brain; defining it as a person’s ability to adapt, change, go with the flow and deal successfully with new problems. Goal setting and future planning are also linked to cognitive flexibility.
The snake comes in and limits your ability to be flexible and tune into positive solutions by planting thoughts of dread and fear. Your ability to tune into options allows you to be adaptable and override the snake. Studies reveal that the majority of the time, what we worry about never even happens: smoke and mirrors.
When I was training for my black-belts, I was taught many different ways to approach my opponent just in case I was blocked, I had options. Below are a few tips, to help you override snake drivin’ stinkin’ thinkin’:
- Distract yourself and come back to the perceived problem later: sing a song, listen to music, talk a walk, play, pray/meditate on a positive thought or word (Amen).
- Ask a question: what do I want to do about this? What is one forward action step I can take to override the snake?
- Talk back to the snake: fight the tendency to respond negatively. Practice deep breathing, pause and shift your focus to something good, beautiful, excellent and praiseworthy.
- Take your negative thought to God in prayer: Lord, this is what I’m thinking, help me override this negative thought with positive thought from you.
- Intentionally write out possible options and solutions when you feel stuck (Amen).
- Brainstorm positive options with people who you know to be positive thinkers (Amen).
- Connect to situations from your past where you were successful and moving through a similar negative situation: I’ve moved through difficult thoughts and situations before and I have confidence with God’s strength and wisdom, I will do it again.
- Memorize and recite the serenity prayer when the snake is bothering you with repetitive thoughts (Amen):
God, grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and
the wisdom to know the difference.
– Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr
Your behavior follows what you think and feel. Stop taking to the snake.Cultivating healthy relationships starts between your two ears.
