Don’t think of a pink elephant. I said DON’T think of a pink elephant.
Did you know… that our brain doesn’t pick up NOT and DON’Ts? So when you say (out loud or just inside your head, to yourself) “I don’t want to be tired”, the only thing registered is “I want to be tired”. Pick a few typical examples from your arsenal of self-talk – come on, I know you have a few standard ones??! Let’s make an experiment: “Don’t think of a pink elephant”. “Don’t think of a pink elephant”. Which image immediately flicked through your head? Your brain needs to create the image of the pink elephant before it can add the don’t. Do you see the trouble that’s creating? You may have heard that what you focus on is what you get. It’s the law of attraction. The more you think and talk about something, the more it comes to mind, the more attention you give it, the more of it you get. So the more you talk and think about how tired you are, guess what? You feel even more tired! So while exactly that will be mentioned a lot in a mothers’ group, and when one says it, the others need to trump it with stories of how … More Don’t think of a pink elephant. I said DON’T think of a pink elephant. »