How to Avoid Negative Thoughts During a Crisis

Stuck in COVID-19 isolation, it’s easy to veer into the deep end of negative thoughts. Many of us are dealing with profound, real-world challenges such as job loss, health crises, and protecting our children. The reality of the situation is difficult enough, but when we allow widespread fear and negativity to enter the picture, the emotional toll can be crippling.

Psychiatrist and author Dr. Daniel G. Amen describes this natural gravitational pull as “ANTs,” or “automatic negative thoughts.” Originally, our brains developed to worry constantly in order to keep us alive as primates. But the predisposition toward fear and concern can interfere with living our best lives.

Dr. Amen describes several “species” of ANTS, including:

  • “Always” thinking. Gravitating to words such as: “always, never, no one, everyone, every time, everything.”
  • Blame: Quick to blame others or external circumstances for your own problems.
  • Focusing on the negative. Only seeing the bad in a situation.
  • Fortune telling. Predicting the worst possible outcome to a situation.
  • Mind reading. Assuming that you know what another person is thinking which, of course, is the worst possible thing.
  • Labeling. Attaching a negative label to yourself or to someone else.

So how do we eradicate an ANT infestation? Dr. Amen suggests a three-step approach:

STEP 1: Recognize it. Becoming aware of our negative thoughts and then realizing which “species” they are is the first step to overcoming these harmful parasites. Shine a bright flashlight on your negative thoughts and examine if your belief is fact or fiction.

STEP 2: Confront it. Instead of accepting the negative belief as a truism, expose the thought for the imposter it is. Just like the bully who wanted your lunch money in sixth grade, negative thinking will back down quickly when you stand up and confront it.

STEP 3: Flip it. If you were tasked with replacing the malignant thought with something more productive, what could you swap in its place? Could, “Staying at home for a month is a total disaster,” become, “This is an opportunity to do the things I never had time for.” Instead of a curse, could you imagine a way to make this period a blessing?

There are enough actual problems right now as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Let’s not add to the mix by also allowing ANTS to invade. Now more than ever, let’s seek the positive angles wherever possible and limit any negative thinking for the many, actual challenges we face.

I hope you use this time of reflection to emerge even stronger. Stay safe and evict the ANTS.

Read More

New Thinking for the New Era of Business

Albert Einstein famously noted, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used when we created them.” In our post-COVID world of ...

When an Astronaut Needs a Pen

Ever get stuck on a problem, only to realize you're solving for the wrong thing? That's exactly what happened when the rocket scientists at NASA ...

How Shake Shack Drives Innovation

Do you prefer the crispy mozzarella, tempura watercress, and black garlic mayonnaise cheeseburger or the pumpkin mustard, bacon, cranberries, and sage hot dog? For something ...

Lady Gaga’s Secret to Creativity

Just before she won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, I watched Lady Gaga dazzle the live audience with a pitch perfect performance of ...

Creativity: Does Size Matter?

For some reason, we’ve been taught that for creativity and innovation to count they need to have a magnitude the size of the 1989 San ...

The Lexicon of Creativity

There’s more confusion around the meaning of the word innovation than the chaos at the airline ticket counter after a cancelled flight. Is there a difference between ...

The Brain Science of Becoming More Creative

When we hear stories about iconic leaders like Salesforce.com’s founder Marc Benioff, or widely celebrated virtuosos like Lin-Manuel Miranda for that matter, we immediately think ...

Correct the Overcorrect

When the misguided leaders at Enron, Tyco and Worldcom committed fraud and marred their shareholders with huge losses, the Securities and Exchange Commission rightfully swooped ...

Learning to Color

Fact: Creativity has become the most needed skill in business. It’s gone from a nice-to-have to becoming mission-critical. Fact: Creativity is a learnable skill. All humans have ...