Put Your
How do you put your mind at ease after making a decision?
I have such a hard time making decisions and then when I do I wonder for days and weeks afterwards wondering if I made the right one. How do you put your mind at ease after you make a decision and how do you trust yourself that it was the right one?
Oh yes, there are lots of people who agonize over a decision, finally make it, and then waste time and energy second-guessing themselves.
Such people have an internal motto they live by, something like, “I MUST make the right decision every time, because if I make a wrong decision it will be terrible, catastrophic, and awful.” But that’s an illogical idea. You can never ALWAYS make right decisions, no matter HOW much you moan and groan and carry on and worry yourself to death about it.
This has nothing to do with once having made a wrong decision, by the way. There’s no “past cause” to it. Instead, it has to do with your need to be perfect. You have a mental image of yourself (Dr. Alfred Adler called it your “ego ideal” or “ideal self”) and it is a mental portrait of yourself as perfect, doing no wrong. that is the mental person who steps front and center when you make a decision and says,
“Hey, you damn well better have made the right choice! I couldn’t live with it if it was wrong! Think over every bit of it and make sure you did all the right things. Are you sure you want this decision to be final? Maybe you could think about it all over again, and make a different decision…What do you mean, get off your back? I’m just your Ideal Self trying to be helpful!”
When you DO find your thoughts challenging your wisdom, use the “4-S Method” to control those thoughts. Here’s how:
1. Stop sign — When you sense a thought you don’t want in your head, in your imagination hold up a huge red stop sign, perhaps being held by a stern-faced crossing guard!
2. Shout it out — Shout at the thought, scream at it, curse at it, yell at it (all in your mind, of course!) until you can sense that it is leaving your mind. (The nice thing about the mind is that it cannot contain more than a single conscious thought at a time.) Treat it like an intruder in your mind, someone you DO NOT want in there! Get angry at it!
3. Substitute — Have handy a sentence or thought to put in the place of the unwanted thought. Make it something strong, something positive, something you really want to believe! (Some people carry such positive or self-encouraging thoughts with them, on 3 x 5 cards.)
4. Sustain — Keep at it. YOU CREATED THE UNWANTED THOUGHT FOR A REASON! (“Psychology of Use” says you think all your thoughts in order to get something from them!) As you kick the unwanted thought out the front door, it will turn around and try to sneak in a window or down the chimney! DON’T LET IT!
Keep repeating the four S’s until you find yourself to be in charge of the thought you don’t want. As you become more comfortable with this, you’ll find you are more in control of your whole mind, and also of your feelings.
Best wishes on this…I know it can be tough when you doubt yourself. JUsing this method faithfully, you will find that, in a week, you have control over your thoughts and feelings. — Dr. Bob
Fedde Le Grand – Put Your Hands Up For Detroit
