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    Conquer Your Negative Thoughts: The Secret to Emotional Freedom and Happiness
    Conquer Your Negative Thoughts: The Secret to Emotional Freedom and Happiness
    Conquer Your Negative Thoughts: The Secret to Emotional Freedom and Happiness
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Conquer Your Negative Thoughts: The Secret to Emotional Freedom and Happiness

    By Daniel G. Amen, MD

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    About this ebook

    Don’t let negative thoughts steal your happiness. . . learn to take charge of your thoughts and rewire your brain.

    Thoughts that we allow to circle again and again in our minds build ruts or roads in the brain, making those thoughts more likely to dominate and control our lives. But we aren’t doomed to feel down when life doesn’t go our way.

    In Conquer Your Negative Thoughts, psychiatrist and clinical neuroscientist Dr. Daniel G. Amen applies his knowledge of how the mind works to help you take back control of your thoughts, consistently generate positive feelings, and master your emotions no matter your age, income, or situation. By retraining your brain to focus on happiness and purpose, you’ll feel healthier, calmer, and more resilient and be fully prepared to face life’s ups and downs.

    Conquer Your Negative Thoughts offers readers:

    • A great resource for those dealing with anxiety and depression
    • Key insights from an expert in his field
    • Tools to change your mental habits based on science
    • Real-life case studies
    • Bible verses to help conquer negative thoughts

    Empower yourself to change your mind’s habits and improve your mental health, for good.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTyndale House Publishers
    Release dateMay 9, 2023
    ISBN9781496457660
    Conquer Your Negative Thoughts: The Secret to Emotional Freedom and Happiness

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      Book preview

      Conquer Your Negative Thoughts - Daniel G. Amen, MD

      Introduction

      A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but the attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

      BYRON KATIE, Loving What Is:

      Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

      ACCORDING TO A 2015 STUDY from Microsoft, the human attention span is eight seconds.[1] A goldfish’s attention span has been estimated at nine seconds. Human development seems to be going the wrong way. With modern technology stealing our attention spans and directing our minds to the will of corporate America, disciplining the habits of our moment-by-moment thoughts is an essential skill for achieving happiness and purpose. Our gadget addiction is feeding an old tendency of the human brain to be scattered, unfocused, and controlled by negativity and fear. Plus, it is making us feel worse.[2] People who have the most screen time (TV, texting, video games) have a higher incidence of feeling unhappy.

      These habits can lead to monkey mind, a term that describes a mind that is unsettled, restless, indecisive, and uncontrollable. Monkey mind was described by Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) in the sixth century BC, but it applies today more than ever. He said, Just as a monkey swinging through the trees grabs one branch and lets it go only to seize another, so, too, that which is called thought, mind, or consciousness arises and disappears continually both day and night.

      Thoughts that you allow to circle again and again in your mind build ruts or roads in the brain, making the thoughts more likely to dominate and control your life.

      Fortunately, you aren’t doomed to feel down when life doesn’t go your way. You can learn how to consistently generate positive feelings no matter your age, income, or situation.

      As a psychiatrist, I’ve written about anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), aging, violence, obesity, memory loss, love, parenting, and other important topics. Yet underlying the reasons most people come to see us at Amen Clinics is the fact that they are unhappy. Helping people be happier day to day is at the core of getting and staying mentally and physically healthy.

      Extensive research has shown that happiness is associated with a lower heart rate, lower blood pressure, and overall heart health. Happier people get fewer infections, have lower cortisol levels (the hormone of stress), and fewer aches and pains. Happy people tend to live longer, have better relationships, and be more successful in their careers. Plus happiness is contagious because happier people tend to make others happier.

      One of my favorite short videos that I encourage all of my patients to watch is by author and talk show host Dennis Prager. In Why Be Happy? he suggests that happiness is a moral obligation. He says:

      Whether or not you’re happy, and most importantly, whether or not you act happy is about altruism, not selfishness—because it is about how we affect others’ lives. . . . Ask anybody who was raised by an unhappy parent whether or not happiness is a moral issue, and I assure you the answer will be yes. It is no fun being raised by an unhappy parent, or being married to an unhappy person, or being the parent of an unhappy child, or working with an unhappy coworker.[3]

      Over the course of the next few chapters, I am going to show you how to identify, understand, and conquer the negative thoughts that are stealing your happiness and teach you how to retrain your brain to focus on the positive and improve your overall quality of life.

      Ready? Good. Let’s get started.

      [1] K. McSpadden, You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish, Time, May 14, 2015, http://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/.

      [2] J. Twenge, What Might Explain the Unhappiness Epidemic? The Conversation website, January 22, 2018, https://theconversation.com/what-might-explain-the-unhappiness-epidemic-90212.

      [3] Dennis Prager, Why Be Happy? PragerU, January 20, 2014, video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zxnw0l499g.

      CHAPTER 1

      Understanding Your Negative Thoughts

      Dark thoughts in the mind are not you, but are false messages from the brain. And because you are not your brain, you don’t have to listen to them.

      JEFFREY M. SCHWARTZ, MD,

      author of You Are Not Your Brain

      IT HAD BEEN A REALLY TOUGH DAY at the office. I had seen four suicidal patients, two teens who had run away from home, and two couples who hated each other. As if this wasn’t bad enough, that evening, when I arrived home and walked into the kitchen, I was greeted by an ant infestation. The little critters were everywhere, coming out of light sockets and spaces between the flooring and the walls. I even found ants in the pantry crawling into cereal boxes. Construction in our neighborhood had disturbed the earth, and the ants were looking for a new residence. Apparently, word had gotten out to a sizable ant colony that the pickings were good in the Amen home.

      As I wet paper towels and began wiping up the horde of ants, the acronym ANT came to me—Automatic Negative Thought. Acronyms had been part of my life since medical school, helping me remember the 50,000 new terms I was learning. As I thought about my patients that day, I realized that, just like my kitchen, they were also infested with ANTs that were robbing them of their joy and stealing their happiness. A bizarre image came to me of ANTs crawling on top of their heads and out of their eyes, noses, and ears. The ANTs were setting up residence inside my patients’ minds. The next day I brought a can of ant spray to work and placed it on my coffee table. As I started to talk about the concept with my patients, they understood it right away.

      ANTs are thoughts that pop into your mind uninvited. They make you feel mad, sad, worried, or upset. And most of the time they’re not even true!

      Think of automatic negative thoughts as you would the ants that might bother a couple at a romantic picnic. One negative thought, like one ant at a picnic, is not a big problem. Two or three automatic negative thoughts, like two or three ants at a picnic, become a bit more irritating. Twenty or 30 automatic negative thoughts, like 20 or 30 ants at a picnic, may cause the couple to pick up and leave. The more you allow the ANTs to stick around in your head, the more they will mate with other ANTs and produce offspring that drive school failure, anxiety, depression, anger, work strife, relationship turmoil, and even obesity.

      The nine different ANT species

      About 10 years ago, the parents of 14-year-old Marcus brought him to see me because he was struggling with schoolwork and with his temper. At his previous school, Marcus barely had to try to get good grades; but after moving to a new school for the athletics, he found the more academically rigorous program challenging, and his grades declined. He had trouble focusing, was easily distracted, procrastinated, and took longer to complete assignments than ever before. A prior psychiatrist diagnosed him with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but the stimulant medications Ritalin and Adderall made him angry and more depressed, and for

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