What is the mental rejection method and how it will help you appreciate what you already have
Miscellaneous / / April 04, 2023
Try a simple sobering exercise.
The publishing house "MIF" published a book by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan "In the red or in the black. A guide to achieving happiness, self-confidence and success. The authors are convinced that many people, especially ambitious ones, are dissatisfied with their progress, which makes them feel unhappy.
We publish an excerpt from the third chapter, which will teach you to value what you already have. But before that, let's briefly talk about the concept of "in the red or in the black" on which the book is built.
In the early 1990s, Dan Sullivan, a world-famous entrepreneur coach, began to notice that his clients were successful entrepreneurs, and people in general were increasingly in the MINUS.
In his terminology, MINUS is an extremely toxic life philosophy that prevents us from being happy and appreciating what we have in our lives. Until a person gets out of MINUS, he can neither be truly happy nor successful. […]
Dan Sullivan
For more than 35 years, he has been strategically advising entrepreneurs, helping them to reach their potential both in business and in their personal lives.
Your development and progress depends on your approach to assessing your own achievements. You can compare the current state of affairs with the ideal, and this immediately takes you to a MINUS, or you can correlate it with your own starting point, appreciating the results, and then you find yourself in PLUS.
Mental Rejection Method
In 1946, Frank Capra made a film called "This wonderful life». In it, the angel Clarence appears to a hero named George Bailey, who is about to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge.
The angel shows George what the world would be like if George had never been born at all.
Clarence does not invite him to remember all the good things that happened in his life, but shows how everything would change if the main character did not exist at all.
George sees a world in which there is nothing of the good that was and is in his life.
Seeing the absence of the positive and realizing how much worse the world would be without it, George realized that there were many truly valuable things in his life.
He completely changed his view of what is happening.
Using the same idea psychologists when conducting experiments, they invited their participants to imagine that there are no more positive and pleasant things in their lives; this exercise is called mental denial. The scientists wanted to find out if the participants would then appreciate what they have more.
Experiments provedR. Janoff-Bulman. Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. New York, NY: Free Press: mental rejection is one of the most powerful techniques for stimulating feelings of gratitude and a sense of happiness.
It turned out that if you imagine that there is and will not be anything positive in your life, then this will give a stronger effect than simply remembering that there is good in it.
If you imagine that someone very important to you is missing from your life, it will work more than if you simply remind yourself of the existence of this person.
During one of the studies It revealedK. Simmen‑Janevska, V. Brandstatter, A. maercker. The invisible relationship between motivational abilities and posttraumatic stress: A review. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 3(1)that if you mentally give up some material values that make you happy, then you will then begin to appreciate them more than if you just remember the moment when you acquired these items.
Also it turned outG. Livingston. Too soon old, Too late smart: Thirty true things you need to know now. Da Capo Lifelong Booksthat those who imagined not having met their romantic partner were much more satisfied with their relationship after such a thought experiment.
What if right now you lose good health? Or can't you walk anymore?
Or go blind?
What will you feel about it?
Now think of someone who is especially dear to you. What if that person dies right now?
What would happen if you never met this person at all?
How different would your life be?
The very thought that I might not meet my wife scares me. It scares me to even think about it, and it helps me appreciate more that she is in my life and that we have a sincere and strong relationship.
Staying in the PLUS, we begin to appreciate everything that we have, including the results of personal growth. Here it is important to compare your current self with your former self and look at all events in life as PLUSES.
We all tend to make the same serious mistake: we take what happens in our lives for granted. That is why the method of mental refusal is so effective.
If you imagine that someone or something important will suddenly disappear from your life, you will appreciate them much more.
Imagining that some of your real achievements you failed to achieve, you realize how far you have come.
It is important to learn how to evaluate yourself not in comparison with abstract and constantly changing ideals, but by those PLUSES that you already have.
Let's figure out how to focus all attention on the BENEFITS.
To begin with, mentally give up something important to you. Use the following algorithm of actions.
1. Get a piece of paper and a pen ready.
2. Choose what you mentally refuse: relationships that are important to you, personal achievement, health or something tangible that you own.
3. Imagine what your life would be like without what you mentally decided to give up, as if it were suddenly taken away from you.
- How will your current situation change?
- How will this affect your future?
- What impact will this loss have on others?
4. Record these changes.
5. Now focus on the current moment and on what you have mentally abandoned - this is your PLUS.
- What can you do to appreciate this PLUS more?
- How can you turn it into new PLUSES?
- How have your thoughts and feelings changed in relation to this PLUS?
- How do you perceive your life in general now?
6. Repeat the exercise by choosing another object, event, achievement, person, state of health.
At dinner one day, Lauren and I proposed children do a little exercise.
- What if every time we get into a MINUS, we will mentally refuse what we are dissatisfied with? I asked. - Here you are complaining about skis - well, no more skis. Complain about the iPod - great, it's gone. You don't like the dish that's made for dinner, so you don't get dinner. If you give up everything that makes you go to MINUS, what will you have left?
“Yes, almost nothing,” the children answered.
This is a very simple exercise, but it was immediately clear to us that each of the participants had experienced a turning point. Since then, our children notice the PLUSES much faster and know how to be grateful.
Just think: what will happen if right now you forever lose what caused you to get into MINUS?
Complain about work - and now there is no work. Dissatisfied with their home - and there is no home either. Get upset when one of the children makes a mistake, - now your life is free of them: no more children.
All this does not mean that you need to ignore the problems or that you can stop trying and strive for the best. It's about realizing that what upsets or angers you can disappear altogether, and then your own emotions will become clearer to you.
Fortunately, in reality, we do not necessarily lose what we get into MINUS because of. But we are definitely damaging what is important to us.
We spoil our own impressions and relationships with other people.
Too often we allow ourselves to slide into a MINUS. We find ourselves in the MINUS due to dissatisfaction with ourselves. We slide into a MINUS because of others, considering them a source of problems or declaring them enemies.
We are in the MINUS for many different things, so it's finally time to stop complaining. Can you get out of MINUS?
From the book "In the red or in the black" you will learn that you need to evaluate your present "I" only in comparison with your past "I". And that's really the key to this deceptively simple yet layered concept that will allow you to feel good, feel grateful and see that you are making progress even in difficult times. time.
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