‘I always fail’
‘I'm such an idiot’.
Dr Beck called these ‘Automatic Negative Thoughts’. He became convinced that Automatic Negative Thoughts affected his patients’ happiness and confidence, and contributed to their depression.
WHAT ARE AUTOMATIC NEGATIVE THOUGHTS (ANTS)?
Automatic Negative Thoughts are also known as ‘ANTs’. The thing is, we all have ANTs. It's normal. Our brains are wired to think negatively because ANTs exist to keep us safe. How so? In prehistoric times, our ancestors relied on negative thoughts for their survival. Random thoughts helped keep them alive. For example:
‘Don't eat that — it might be poisonous!’
‘What's that noise? I'm being hunted!’
However, ANTs aren't nearly as useful for those of us who are living a fairly cosy existence in the twenty‐first century. We might be trying to shoot a goal in basketball when a thought pops up: Don't shoot — you'll miss! or What's that whispering? My teammates are laughing at me. These ANTs don't help us to survive. In fact, they often prime us for failure.
The tricky thing about ANTs is that they often come from deep beliefs we have about life. Often, ANTs seem so true that we don't notice when we're having one, and we don't stop to question it. Instead, we just start feeling bad about ourselves without really knowing why. So how do we overcome ANTs?
HOW TO MASTER YOUR THOUGHTS
Your brain is a muscle. Just like any other muscle in your body, it needs exercise. Instead of running, jumping or dancing for exercise, your brain gets a workout by thinking. Each time you have a thought, a different neural pathway in your brain is exercised. The more ‘reps’ you do of this thought, the stronger the neural pathway becomes. If you do a hundred bicep curls every day, you'll notice your biceps getting bigger (and at first, really sore). Similarly, if you think, ‘I'm stupid’ one hundred times every day, the neural pathway associated with that thought grows stronger. The thought becomes more ingrained, more believable and more automatic.
Instead of letting ANTs happen, you can choose to be aware of your thoughts by using your feelings as a cue. How?
First, if you start to feel down, try to identify the thought that caused this.
Second, challenge the thought. Ask yourself, ‘Is this thought true?’ Just because your mind is telling you something, it doesn't automatically make it fact.
My story
A few years ago, I was playing in a really good basketball team. It was halfway through the season and we'd won every match. We'd also won the previous season. One night, I was driving home when an ANT popped up in my mind: We scored 85 points tonight, but I only scored four. I must be ‘That Guy’ (the guy no‐one wants to pass the ball to because he’ll mess up and ruin the game). The thought seemed to come out of nowhere, but I challenged it: You’re having an ANT. Just because you’re thinking something, it doesn’t make it true.
After our next game, I approached a guy on our team who was an incredible player.
‘I'm thinking about stepping off the team,’ I confessed.
‘Nah, man, don't do that,’ he said. ‘We need you. Every time you step off the court our lead decreases because your rebounding and your defence are so strong.’
During the next match, I took more notice of how I contributed to the team, and I saw he was right. My job wasn't to take possession and score. I was a defender. That's right: I wasn't MJ (Michael Jordan), I was Dennis Rodman. Basketball teams need both types of players.
If I hadn't called myself out though, I would have gone into the next game acting like ‘That Guy’. I would have been thinking, No‐one wants to pass me the ball. This ANT would have affected my confidence and my game. Then my teammates really might not want to pass me the ball, and I'd risk really becoming ‘That Guy’. But I became aware of the ANT and I squashed it. By fact‐checking with another player and weighing up the evidence, I realised what I'd assumed wasn't true. I replaced my ANT with a positive thought — I'm a good defender — and it boosted my self‐esteem.
Two weeks later I severed my ACL (a ligament in my knee). It took me 12 months to get back on the court. Two weeks after I did my ACL, my basketball team lost their first match in two years. This reinforced to me that I wasn't the guy no‐one wanted to pass the ball to. My role on the team wasn't to score points, but that didn't mean I wasn't a valuable team member. From that point on, I had the conviction — and the repeated positive thought — that my team needed me to be able to function well.
Here is a photo of me excited about my first basketball match after tearing my ACL.
When I returned to basketball after recovering from my injury, I had to join a new team because my old team had fallen apart. We were winning three seasons in, and I started playing attack instead of defence. I was regularly scoring 20 to 25 points each game. I put this down to having improved my thinking around basketball, and actively working on raising my self‐esteem.
You too can ward off those ANTs by choosing to be aware of your thoughts and identifying whether or not they're true.
Try this
Nip your ANTs in the bud
For the rest of today and tomorrow, I want you to try and catch any Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) you experience. Pay attention to how you're feeling, and if you start to feel down or discouraged out of nowhere, identify the ANT causing it.
If you're not sure whether your ANT is a true fact or not, check with someone. Don't ask your mum if you're beautiful/good looking though because, of course, she's going to say yes (unless you have a very real and honest relationship with her). Ask a trusted, but neutral, adult: a teacher, an adult you look up to and see as a mentor. This might be your auntie/uncle or a next‐door neighbour.
Don't jump on ASKfm or any of your socials. Just don't.
Be self‐aware
Self‐awareness is about understanding your needs, desires, failings, habits and what makes you tick. If you take the opportunity to learn about yourself, it will be easier to deal with life's challenges.
A big part of self‐awareness is understanding your emotions. As I mentioned before, it's okay to feel. Your emotions are valid. You will have feelings about yourself that are unpleasant. Sometimes these feelings stem from ANTs. Sometimes they occur because of something someone says about you, or something that happens to you.
It's normal to want to push down or ignore nasty feelings. Have you ever had a rush of anger or despair so strong that it feels like you can't cope? This happens because negative feelings build up inside us like a pressure chamber until, eventually, we can't contain them anymore and we either explode or experience a meltdown.
Being self‐aware means that instead of trying to hide your feelings, or push them away, you choose to pay attention to the emotion and what it's trying to tell you.
My story
When I was a teenager, I didn't know what self‐awareness was. By Year 8, my self‐esteem had spiralled downwards. I blamed