Do You Play Musical NST with Friends and Family?

Caroline, the oldest of three similar-looking middle-aged sisters, all smart, self-aware, and long-time, experienced negative self-talkers, tells a story about the siblings’ shared habit. The pattern developed over decades, unplanned but predictable. Any one of the sisters would start by putting herself down, while the other two jumped in rapidly to reassure her that none of her self-criticism was true. In fact they would comment that the negative self-talker was smarter, prettier, thinner, more talented, funnier than the reassuring sisters. One of the reassuring sisters then moved on to self-denigration, and the other two became the reassurers. The musical chairs continued with different sisters occupying different roles as the pattern played on.

 The three were looking at recent photographs, when the middle sister, JoAnne, said to the youngest, “You said I looked great in these pictures. How could you say that? Look at my fat cheeks. Uck! And my hair looks terrible. I look fat and matronly.” Alert for the usual volley of disagreement and reassurance, she faced an awkward pause instead. Then Caroline said, “JoAnne, you’re pointing at the picture of me, not you. You’re saying all those nasty comments about me, not you.” A moment of shock followed, then a jolt of laughter. Suddenly they confronted the ridiculous ritual that the negative self-talk habit had generated. JoAnne would never have been critical about Carolyn’s appearance. Because she thought the photo was of her, not JoAnne, she reflexively jumped into negative self-talk mode.

A bad habit — shared by many American women who engage in the common, harmful negative self-talk habit; a consistent pattern of frequent, often automatic, critical inner monologues. “I’m a loser.” “How stupid was that move?” “I never handle these situations the way I should.” “I look like a blimp.” We allow it to rule our thoughts and feelings, to take over our common sense and self-worth, to misdirect our behavior. If you do it, you're wasting time and energy, self-esteem and productivity.

Time to get a grip and dump the NaSTy habit. Stay tuned or read back to the beginning for more info, suggestions, clarification!

Are Internal or External Stressors the Real Cause of Your Stress?

I propose that for many women, inner stressors such as unrealistic demands and expectations of themselves, communicated through harsh negative self-talk, create greater and more frequent pressure than external stressors. For example, you've invited friends over for dinner Saturday night. You've got a busy day as most weekend days are with the kids activities, house stuff like weeding or finding outdoor furniture, but you figure you can make it work. Maybe you can get to the Farmer's market and have burgers, corn on the grill and a big salad  — on the patio. Oops. It starts raining mid-day. Your 2 year old is grouchy. The house is messy.


What’s the major cause of the stress? The external or the internal stressors? The chaos itself or your negative self-talk about the chaos? The icy road or the self-criticism? The deadline ahead or the inner critic? I'd like to know your response. Please send me your comment, particularly if you disagree.

Just Dance. Don't Think.

Darcy Kistler, retiring from the New York City ballet tells of Balanchine’s early message to her. Just dance. Don’t think. Kistler adds, “He knew people better than anybody. He probably thought that I was an overthinker. Maybe he didn’t want me to get in my own way.”  (NYTimes, Arts, 6/27/2010)

The quote follows along with last week’s post; another great example of strategic allocation of attention.

Sometimes it’s best to not pay attention to what we are thinking. Why? Because our self-talk, even if it’s instructional or positive rather than negative, can interfere with the flow of our instincts, movement and action. Being ”in the zone” is a form of detachment; a state of mind where we are focused in the moment, mostly in our right brain, paying no attention to what’s going on in our left brain. We allocate attention to now, rather than to our thoughts about past, present, future, evaluation, information, or instruction.

 For example, rather than thinking as I start to write this post, “Does this article make sense? I wonder if anyone else is interested in strategic allocation of attention. Maybe this is boring,” I just write without thought at the moment, in the same way tennis player Rafael Nadal just serves without thinking. He thought before the game started and he will think later after the game is over, but during the game Nadal, like many other successful athletes, are only "now" in their head. Later I will go back, and move into instructional mode and action. “ Stick to one concept Judy.” “The post needs more white space.” “Add some links.”