Have you ever seen a Blue Elephant? No?
What happens when I say, “Don’t think of a Blue Elephant?” Do you see it? Right? (If you don’t, check your pulse. You may be dead.) I have a feeling you want to know the cause of this phenomena.
Some time ago I discovered that my unconscious mind too deletes the negation and goes straight to the point. I have realized that the mind acts like a Genie. It always says “Your wish is my command” when it comes to thinking. It doesn’t question my thinking. It doesn’t try to choose the right thought for me. It only supports me 100% of the time.
Whether I am focusing on what I want or I am focusing on what I don’t want. And not just my mind acts like a Genie from the bottle. Any mind does it. Yours too.
Do you remember the time when you were worried about something? Thinking about what could happen, trying to avoid “Don’t’ think about it” and yet falling into the obsessive overthinking. You were trying to resolve the situation by thinking more about “what if…” While your Blue Elephant was getting bigger and bigger.
You see, this is how we create anxiety and fears… by continually focusing on what we don’t want to happen. Because the Genie says YES to everything that we are paying attention to and focusing on. The Genie always creates more of IT.
For the same reason, if you say to a child who’s carrying a precarious lunch tray, “Don’t drop it!” they will drop it. Do you want to live anxiety/fear-free? Train yourself to focus on what you really want rather than what you don’t want.
How?
Here are three steps to send the right message to your Genie:
- Watch your self-talk. Notice when you say to yourself “I don’t want this to happen”.
- Reframe your statement from negative to positive. Ask yourself “What DO I WANT?”
- Reframe to Positive when you hear yourself talking to others using a negation.
You don’t need to feed the anxiety/fear. You don’t need to feed a Blue Elephant anymore. Let us free from the clutter of negative emotions and images of failure our own minds and the minds of people we interact with.
Your wish is your command.
And of course, telling someone who is deeply in love, “Don’t think about your sweetheart!” gets you a smile.