Thought Nudging
A few months ago, I talked about examining your thoughts to find patterns that weren’t serving you. (If you need a refresher, click here:
https://www.burningbrightmd.com/blog/our-thoughts-work-until-they-dont) Once we’ve found a thought pattern that may not serve us, we can start to nudge the thought pattern toward one that serves us and gets the results we want.
Last time, I worked with the thought model:
C: 15 patients for the clinic day
T: “I should have prepared better”
F: Dread
A: Ruminate, beat yourself up, over-caffeinate, delay coming to the clinic (preventing your having any breathing room before the first patient is ready to be seen), put off writing notes because of sliding into perfectionism, get quick dopamine hits by cleaning out email inbox (but not actually accomplishing anything other than deleting emails), miss out using the time I do have for the patients I have coming up for the remainder of the day
R: You’re not prepared well for anything that day because your brain space is being used in a way that does not allow you to act, only to react (probably leaving you exhausted at the end of the day such that you also won’t be able to prep for the next day’s clinic in a way that would serve you)
The result, “I’m not prepared well for anything that day,” wouldn’t particularly serve me. Once I accept that I cannot change the circumstance, “15 patients for the clinic day,” but I can change the way I think about it, that’s the first step to creating thought patterns that serve me and help me achieve the results I want in my life. For example, instead of my automatic (maybe previously unconscious) thought, “I should have prepared better,” I can ask myself what a believable, neutral-feeling thought about the circumstance may be. In this case, “I’m going to do my best for all 15 patients without driving myself nuts” feels believable and doesn’t invoke any strong feelings in me one way or another. Then, I can put that thought in a model and see how the results from that thought would serve me:
C: 15 patients for the clinic day
T: “I’m going to do my best for all 15 patients without driving myself nuts”
F: Realistically committed
A: Block of 5 minutes per patient for chart review the night before (because 10 minutes would = 2.5 hours total, and I’m honest with myself that it would drive me nuts), acknowledge that 5 minutes of chart review is better than no minutes of chart review, make a note of recurrent issues among patients to create templates at some point during administrative time, jot down one or two bullet points to cover with each patient, commit to going to bed at a decent hour so I’m well-rested, experiment with setting my phone to “do not disturb” during my clinic day, figure out ways to avoid time-wasters like email and social media
R: I regain agency over my clinic day and do my current best caring for my patients without sacrificing my own well-being and sliding into victim mentality
So then, whenever I catch my brain giving me the old, hard-wired thought that isn’t serving me (“I should have prepared better”), I can go, “Nope, wait, ‘I’m going to do my best for all 15 patients without driving myself nuts’ now.” Eventually, you’ll have practiced the new thought enough that your brain will naturally offer you that one instead of the old one. That’s how we start nudging our thought processes to get the results we want.
Notice the move is to find a believable, neutral-feeling thought. This is why life coaching differs from toxic positivity and a “good vibes only” mentality. Immediately trying to change my thoughts about the circumstance of my 15 clinic patients from overwhelmingly negative to super positive simply won’t work. My brain will not go from “this sucks” to “this is awesome” with one step; the super positive thought isn’t believable, so I’ll just be wrestling with practicing it and then beating myself up when my brain isn’t making any progress. Once my brain has fully cemented the neutral thought, I can start nudging it towards a more positive thought about the circumstance. You don’t have to be in a hurry to change your thoughts to yield all positive results. We can relieve a lot of suffering in our lives just by moving our reflexive negative thoughts into neutral territory.
What about if I have a thought that’s leading to results that aren’t serving me, but I don’t want to give up that thought? For example, when I get an ASPCA mailer, I look at the caged puppy on the front, and I think, “Animal abusers are the absolute worst.” I don’t want to give up that thought; in my definition of what it means to be a good person, I am being a good person by thinking animal abuse is wrong. However, if I get myself into the model of:
C: ASPCA mailer
T: “Animal abusers are the absolute worst”
F: Enraged
A: Ruminate on how unfair it is that animals are abused, lament that I wish ASPCA would stop sending me mailers because seeing them makes me feel so awful, keep the whole stack of mail on the kitchen island because “I don’t want to deal with any of this right now,” forgo going through ANY of the mail and create clutter that I’ll have to deal with later, beat myself up for having a messy kitchen island, eventually get around to the pile of mail where I’ll be confronted with the ASPCA mailer with the caged puppy on the front again…
R: I suffer in a cluttered, overwhelming environment that I created myself while not actually doing anything to change the state of abused animals.
But I don’t want to give up the thought that animal abusers are the absolute worst. How can I hang onto that thought while forgoing the suffering it creates? Like this:
C: ASPCA mailer
T: “Animal abusers are the absolute worst, and I’m really happy I have the means to help the ASPCA do their work”
F: Generous
A: Bang through the rest of the mail to separate out all of the things that need actions taken, recycle all of the mail I don’t have to do anything with, grab my checkbook or computer and make all of the donations/pay all of the bills from that stack of mail in one fell swoop, recycle all of the things left over from that process, appreciate my clear kitchen island and the feeling of making some difference in the world of abused animals, no matter how small
R I take agency over something that could feel overwhelming, tangibly help abused animals via my donation to the ASPCA, and glow in the amazingness of my clutter-free kitchen island.
Thought nudging. It takes some work, but it gets way easier when we start to see how simple it can be to use it to stop feeling so bad all the time. What are the reflex thoughts you’ve noticed in the past few weeks? Is there one that comes up over and over again? Take just 30 seconds: what’s a believable, neutral-feeling thought you could have in its place? I’d love to hear what you come up with; hit “reply” on this email and tell me how you’re nudging those thoughts ☺