Sit & Talk: ANT Attack

We explore how automatic negative thoughts trap attention, drain energy, and feel like fire ants that sting long after the first step. We share five simple tools to interrupt the loop and manage ANTs with clarity, humor, and practice.

• defining automatic negative thoughts and why they repeat
• the 60,000-thought estimate and negativity bias
• cutting off thoughts with pattern interrupts and pink elephants
• labeling thoughts to reduce emotional charge
• exaggerating fears to absurdity to break grip
• flipping statements to opposites that empower
• why removing negative speech beats forced positivity
• first-person affirmations that build ownership and calm
• shifting the aim from stopping ANTs to managing them daily

https://aarondegler.com/

Transcript

Welcome & Warm-Up Banter

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Walk and Talk. Thank you for taking time to join us. If this is your first time to join us on Walk and Talk, Sit and Talk or Sitting and Talking, each week we just join in a live call as we have a conversation about a different mental conditioning topic. Each week, just um we discuss that topic just to um condition our mind to be stronger, to give us some tools to use in everyday life. So thank you again for joining us on sit and talk. Let's join our live call. How's everybody?

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Wonderful, wonderful, amazing, amazing, not wonderful, not wonderful. Hi, Callie. Get it together, Callie. I know. Are you running in the morning? I don't know. Okay, well let me know. If not, I'm gonna go to the seven o'clock treadmill class. Okay, I will let you know. No seven o'clock treadmill class.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

We we we we do have we we do we we do have one at seven thirty.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Have one at what time?

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Seven thirty.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

I could have sworn I signed up for a seven o'clock. There is a seven o'clock uh circuit class every day. Every day. I didn't think I did that. Okay, I'll look at it off here. You're gonna walk in waiting for a treadmill class and be surprised.

Why Thoughts Run On Repeat

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yeah, gonna be a circuit class. All right, we'll get started. So has anybody had today any thoughts running through your mind or your brain?

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah.

Introducing ANT Attacks

SPEAKER_01 1:48

What? Well, again, anything, any kind of any kind of thoughts, just random thoughts, any kind of thoughts. I would think since most of you, and even when you're asleep, you're gonna have thoughts because you're dreaming and all those. So it you know, we can't help but we have thoughts going through our brain. So whether you realized or not, consciously you did have thoughts going through your brain. Even when you're daydreaming, even when you weren't paying attention, you're having all kinds of different thoughts. Actually, we have about 60,000 thoughts a day. 60,000. So when you think, well, I'm not thinking about much, actually, you have 60,000 thoughts a day. Of those 60,000, 85 to 90 percent are repetitive, same thoughts over and over and over again. So, really, new thoughts, you only have maybe 10 percent new thoughts, but of those 85 to 90 percent, so I mean, we're looking at you know, we're not even have six or seven new thoughts. So, of roughly 50,000 thoughts that we have that are repetitive, 75 to 80 percent of those are negative. So it's just like when you play a your favorite song that you just love so much and you can't get enough of. Back in the day when we had tapes, you just kept hitting that rewind button, rewind button. Now you just hit that little symbol on your phone that says it's gonna repeat over and over and over. It's because a song you love, but you do the same thing we do, the same thing with our thoughts on repeat. 75 to 80 percent. We just hit the replay all day long. Replay, replay, replay. So we're gonna talk about those thoughts. Have you ever stepped in a fire amp pile? And what what happened? They cover you, they cover you, they they cover you, and then what happens?

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Lots of nasty thoughts come to your mind.

Strategy One: Cut Off The Thought

Strategy Two: Label The Thought

Strategy Three: Exaggerate To Absurd

Positives vs Negatives Cannot Coexist

Words Matter More Than You Think

Opposite Thinking In Practice

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Lots of nasty thoughts, and maybe a few words, and a few words, and they might then become audible, yeah. But typically we step in them, they crawl on you for a few minutes, not even maybe a few minutes, maybe a few seconds, and then what do you start to feel? You start to feel some bites like, oh, that hurts, and then you start swiping them off, and so you swipe them off, and they might leave a little red spot, and then the next day you wake up, and what do you have? You have more than a red spot, blisters, blisters, you have blisters, and then those blisters just don't go away by the end of the day, the next day, they stick around for a few days. So, we're gonna talk about ant attacks. So, similar to the fire ants, we're gonna talk about the other kind of ant attacks that we do the same thing. We step in them, we don't feel anything, then all of a sudden we start to feel a little bite, and then they stick around for days. And those ants we're gonna talk about is automatic negative thoughts. A and T. Automatic negative thoughts. There are ants because if we have 60,000 thoughts a day, 85 to 90 percent are repetitive, and of those 85 to 90 percent, close to 80 percent are negative, those are automatically happening on repeat. They're like you hit the repeat button and you don't have to think about it again. So, we're gonna talk about just like you put out some poison to get rid of your fire ant bed, we're gonna talk about how do you stop ant attacks, how do you stop automatic negative thoughts? How do you do that? So, the first thing we're gonna do is cut off the thought. So you can't you can't necessarily stop a thought. Some something comes into your mind and you can't go, oh, I didn't want to have that thought. Well, you already had that thought. So it's not so if you were think about it, if you were to stop that thought before it came in, then it wouldn't be a thought. So I'm gonna tell you, whatever you do, the next words I say, don't think about. Don't think about a pink elephant, don't think about it at all. You you can't help it, you just pictured a pink elephant because you couldn't stop the thought. But we're gonna talk about cut off the thought. So, what does that mean? So the moment a thought enters your mind, you can cut it off. And we're talking about a negative, negative thought. When it enters your mind, you can think of something happier or something different, it's some sort of negative thought. Maybe think of a happy birthday that you had, or a you know, when you're on vacation, what's your ideal, like perfect location? Like you think this is the vacation at perfection, and so when you have that negative thought, you just automatically start thinking about that place or that thing or that person, and you'll switch to that because kind of our goal to stop an ant attack is to interrupt our thought pattern. Because if we're on a loop, and maybe you have that one song that you're just loving right now, it's just the greatest. Well, if you put another song in there in its place, that's gonna stop the the loop of that one playing over and over and over. And you know, we've probably all been guilty from time to time that's that real sad song that you're just feeling all the emotions and feels about, and you just want to play about play it over and over because you want to feel that way. This would be the same as taking a happy song and replacing it, is really all we're doing when we cut off the negative thought. It's not we're stopping it, it's thinking, I should be better. That's a negative thought, or I'm not good enough, or I didn't do that right. To as soon as you cut it off, you start thinking you think about I didn't do that right. Oh, remember that beach I really like? Oh, remember that mountain, because now you you you're you're thinking about the happy or where you like, and you can't think about the other. Um, so we want to cut it off. Um and if all else fails, if you cannot think of anything, anything that makes you happy, or anything that is different, or you think of a pink elephant. Because if you think of a pink elephant, it's gonna automatically stop you from cutting off that, you're gonna be cut off from that negative thought. So we're gonna cut it off. And the second thing to stop an ant attack, automatic negative thoughts, is to label the thought. Because probably today, you can probably think back over your day and you can probably think of a bunch of negative thoughts you had. My negative thought is maybe I don't want to get out of bed, or I don't know why I'm working out, it's not doing any good. I don't feel any stronger. I eat all the time. You you I mean, probably today you probably just had that's just probably one of a gazillion different thoughts you had that were negative. But we can label the thought. So as soon as we recognize it's a negative thought, we can label it as I'm experiencing a negative thought. How many times have you had a negative thought and said, I'm having a negative thought? It's kind of like probably never. You've probably never gone self, you're having a negative thought. So we remind ourselves it's only a thought. Thoughts thoughts only have power if we react to them. So how do we react? These pants are tighter. I'm so depressed over that. You reacted. That thought had power at that moment. Before you attach an emotion to it, that thought never had any power, it was simply a thought, nothing more, nothing less than a thought. It becomes negative or positive when we attach an emotion to it. So a lot of times we can get trapped in a negative thought. How do we get trapped in a negative thought? We get trapped in a negative thought by I stumped my toe. Ouch, that really hurt. I wonder, I wonder if I'm gonna be able to put a tennis shoe on. Oh, wow. I bet my foot's gonna turn black and blue. Oh, I wonder if that's gonna affect my ankle. Oh, I'm probably my whole leg's probably gonna hurt. I'm probably not gonna be able to exercise. Oh, I'm probably not gonna be able to get out of bed. And it just we give it power because that thought starts to grow because of all the things we put with it. We get trapped in that thought. Think about maybe whenever you have a little bit of anxiety and you think of going in somewhere, then you're trapped in that thought because you're thinking, where do I go? What do I do? Who do I see? Who do I talk to? Now you're trapped in that. And and the thing you're having all that anxiety over, somebody else might not even think it's not even, they don't even think about it. It they don't even give that thought any power. It might come to their brain, but they feel nothing about it and go on. So we have to label it as soon as we recognize it's a negative thought. I'm experiencing a negative thought. And then at that moment, if you haven't already cut it off, um, and it comes in, then you can label it and go, okay, this is a negative thought. Then you can cut it off. You can cut it off with a pink elephant. Um, because a pink elephant's funny, and it always cut off a negative thought just because it's funny, and and and so we can label it and move on instead of get getting it trapped. We we walk up to a bear trap. A bear trap is a huge thing, it goes clap, and it I mean, it takes off an arm, I think. But sometimes we do that. You can go up to them and go, oh, that's a bear trap, and walk away. Does the bear trap affect you at all? Nope. No, but if you go, oh, that's a bear trap, I bet it'll hurt if I touch here and you put your hand in there and then it clamps, and that's gonna hurt because now you're trapped in it. But it didn't bother the bear trap for you to walk away, did it? Same thing with the thought. It doesn't bother the thought if you walk away from it, it doesn't hurt its feelings, it just simply stays a thought and goes away and and it's repetitive, so it'll come back. No worries. So we have to label it and move on, because it's not gonna hurt its feelings. I mean, chances are we're gonna have a we're gonna have an opportunity to deal with it later in the day. And and so we we can label the thought. And the next thing is, third thing is we can exaggerate it to the most ridiculous thing we can think of. So if you think about if if it makes you nervous going in somewhere and there being a crowd, maybe you go in and go, and I bet when I go in, everybody is not gonna be wearing any clothes, or they're all gonna be standing on their head, or they're all gonna have blindfolds on. Just something that is really crazy that you go, well, that's not gonna happen. That I mean, you know, that's never gonna happen. And then you keep going over that until your mind goes, that is the most craziest thing. And so we we take that thought, and if we haven't been able to cut it off, we labeled it, but we weren't able to move on, then we can take it to the most crazy, ridiculous thing that there is. And eventually our brain's gonna go, well, that's never gonna happen. And then chances are it's gonna say it's never gonna happen, and then as soon as you get out of the car to go in there, then you'll have all of it again. So then you got to do it all again. Because sometimes those, you know, those ant hills, those in our ant beds in our yard, we can leave them there. But the thing about our ants, our automatic negative thoughts, they walk around with us. It's like having an ant pile walking around with you all day long that you're just one step away from stepping into. So that's why we're trying to work on stopping the ant attack. Sometimes when you put poison on an ant bed, maybe it takes more than once. The same thing is true with how do we stop our ant attacks. It's gonna take practice, we're gonna have to do it over and over and over. Sometimes we when we have a negative thought, and that's negative, we can turn it into a positive. Because the interesting thing is a positive and negative thought cannot coexist. So, in other words, you cannot think of a positive and a negative at the exact same time. Because all of you are trying to do it right now. Um, you're trying to think of something positive, something negative, and you are thinking of something positive and negative, but it's you're thinking of one and then you're thinking of the other, and then you go, no, I'll switch them around. And then you're still switching around. You can only think of one or the other. So you can only think of a pink elephant or going into the group of people that you don't know. Or pink elephant. Now you just thought of a pink elephant. Group of people, now you thought of the people. See how that works? When I say group of people, chances are you're not you you're not thinking about the pink elephant. So when we if we turn that negative into a positive, we're gonna focus, we're gonna think about the positive again. Just like you try to switch them around your brain, we're gonna go back to the negative, but then again, we go, that's a negative. Let me cut it off and think of the positive. So they can't coexist. And an interesting thing is we we always say, have positive mantras, to say positive things, to not be so negative. But the interesting thing is that actually studies show that it is more effective to just not say the negative things than it is to have a bunch of positive things. So if you were to if you were to stop saying negative things out loud, it's you're gonna be end up being more positive than if you just started saying a bunch of positive things. You don't even have to say any positive things. If you just stop, don't say any positive things, don't say the negative, it's you're still gonna be more positive just simply because of you cutting out those negative words that you're saying. They have way more power than the positive words. So again, we can't we can't stop the negative thought. We're just looking to cut it off. And by just cutting it off, when we're saying the positive thing or the thing that makes us happy, it's not that that thing is making us happier, it's because we're stopping, we're cutting off the negative, um, is really what's making the difference, not necessarily the positive. So how's that look thinking the opposite? I can't do anything, I can do everything, and so when you say I can do everything, it's hard to say everything and I can't. I mean, you you really can't you can't say those at the same time. I I challenge you to to keep trying, and and you'll drive yourself nuts because you can't. So it's always a positive, is maybe I'm not strong enough. I am so strong, maybe it's I'm not smart enough. I am so smart that I can that I can do this, and it's just switching it, and and it's whatever you're thinking it's negative. I can't go in there. I can go in there, I can't get out of the car, I can get out of the car. I can't pass up that food. I can pass up that food. And it's just saying the positive because then it stops that negative thought. Because when does the thought have power? When we give it power. If you walk away from the thought, it'll sit there until you come back and and it won't chase you. It won't run and and like a chubby kid after a candy bar. It won't. It will just stay right where it's at until you and you will come back around to it because we are we have repetitive thoughts. So we're gonna come we're gonna circle back around to that thing, and it'll be sitting right where we left it, waiting for us to pick it up again. It kind of like, you know, kind of like Tango when he sees me coming towards him, he goes, Oh, oh, oh, this is the time. This is the time he's gonna pet me. This oh no, this is not the time. Okay, maybe next time. That's what our thought does. Oh, maybe this is the time it's gonna give me attention. Oh, no, not today. Oh, not this time. So it'll it'll be there for us. And so we have to cut off the negative thought. We're not getting rid of it, we're just cutting it off. We label it. Hey, this is a negative thought. What am I gonna do with it? And we exaggerate it to the most crazy, ridiculous thing. And then when we have that negative thought, we think the opposite. And then the last one is we use affirmations on the negative, maybe just a simple statement that we repeat to ourselves over and over again. If anybody watched Family Matters back in the day with Urkel, Urkel is a little dorky kid, has glasses, had his suspenders, and he'd always bug the heck out of Carl. Carl was his next door neighbor, and he bugged him so much that Carl had a heart attack because he'd always be stressed out when Urkel was around. And so they gave Carl some words to say. And anytime Urkel was bothering him, he'd go, one, two, three, what the heck is bothering me? And then he'd calm down. And so the whole episode was about, you know, he was saying it all the time because Urkel always irritated. And he'd say it multiple times in a row because Urkel was really irritating. But it's something as simple as that is one, two, three, what the heck is bothering me? Something that helps you to relax, to change it. There's at the gym behind the desk, and I think I've mentioned this before, Kim had drawn out for me a Superman symbol. Because, again, I can't point it out, but just trust me that I know that I read it, that I just can't tell you where. Because I I I learned random stuff and I don't know where it comes from. But if if if you take on the Superman pose, in other words, a Superman pose is chest out, arms back, you feel strong, powerful, and it actually shows to it for men to increase testosterone levels, to increase confidence, all of those things just by doing that pose because of all the the physiological things that go along with it, thought processes, all those things. So there was a so she made the Superman emblem for me and I'll post a note and put it behind the desk there at Synergy. And so on days that maybe I was stressed or you know something was really bothering me, I would see that, and that's what I would think. I would in my mind, I wouldn't stand there at the front desk like I would do that in my mind, and that would help alleviate and get rid of some of the negative thoughts, some of the negative ways I was feeling. And so that's really can be that was more of an action, but it can also be a statement of one, two, three, what the heck is bothering me? And affirmations too, like on the wall up here, we have you are. I'm as in the middle as you are, and then all around is you are generous, you are strong, all the things. What you are is powerful, but when you read it, your mind unconsciously thinks you are, which Refers to somebody else. But when we have an affirmation that says I am, it is a much stronger affirmation because you're taking ownership of that. I mean you're saying, I am strong, I am powerful, I am confident, I am resilient, I am consistent, I am talented. When you say I am, you can own it and feel like it is who you are. So even a simple statement like that, maybe it's something, you know, you always have this, you notice it's a recurring negative thought over and over and over. Think about an affirmation that might be the exact opposite of that. Maybe it is with some anxiety, you say, I am confident. And maybe it's something that you have to always say, I am confident, I am confident. Even if you're standing in the middle of a crowd and talking to yourself, I am confident, I am confident. People look at you funny, but that's okay. Because you be you, Boo-Boo. But it is something that you say that means something to you. Just like we've talked about the word, your word. It's something that means something to you. I mean, I think I did 60 or 70 words. None of them really meant anything to me when I read them, um, but they're very powerful for each of you. Um, that gave me a word. And that is how it should be. It should be something that is an affirmation on the negative for you. So, so really the challenge is on our because we're not gonna stop the negative thoughts. That's not our goal is to stop them. It is to have a way, and really it shouldn't be five ways to stop ant attacks. It should be five ways to manage ant attacks. Because really, that's what we're doing, we're managing them because they're they're gonna be automatic thoughts. How do we manage them? And really, we're not gonna be very good at them at first. We have to practice, and we have to practice because at all of your ages, we're all different ages. Think of all the years you've been having automatic negative thoughts. And on average, if you have 60,000 a day, multiply that times 365 days a year, and multiply it by your age, and that is a lot of thoughts. And then whatever that number is, go ahead and multiply it times about 75%. And that's how many negative thoughts you've had in your lifetime so far, and that could be pretty depressing. So to think that you're just gonna all of a sudden have some positive thoughts overnight is not gonna happen. It takes practice. So that is the challenge, is I think the biggest one, the challenge is, and you could do all of them, but I think if there was one, what would you do? And I would say it'd be cut off the negative thought. When you get it, go negative thought, pink elephant. Negative thought, speech, negative thought, margarita, margarita, negative thought, somebody I love. Whatever it is, as soon as it comes in, you've recognized as negative thought. Don't give it power, just cut it off with whatever you want, whatever makes you automatically think of something else. And you may be, as we had this on walk and talk on Tuesday, I've had a lot of people tell me, numerous people already this week, and what that was yesterday, say they used Pink Elephant a lot yesterday. A lot, and didn't really realize how many times they would be saying that because when we become aware of something, we go, wow, that is a lot. So that's really the challenge, is the biggest one I think is cut off that negative thought. And it and just remember that it only has power if you give it power. So your negative thinking is only controlling you because you're giving it power, it is trapping you because you have now given it power because you have now given it emotion. Any thoughts, comments, or questions about our ant attacks? All right, so the goal is to manage them. I'm gonna rename this from stop ant attacks to manage ant attacks. So if you have any thoughts, comments, or questions, just let me know. Thank y'all. I'll see everybody tonight or tomorrow. Thank you. And thank you to each of you for joining us on Sit and Talk. I look forward to seeing you right here next time on Sit and Talk.