7 Press Pause and Change the Tape
Your Mind Will Believe What You Tell It (So Tell It Good Things)
First, at the risk of dating myself, let’s make sure we all understand what I mean by a tape. Remember when you used to play music on eight-track tapes? And then cassette tapes? The beauty of music tapes was that you could get to the end of the song, press rewind, and play it again. And again. And, as my parents can testify, again.
Thoughts work the same way. In addition to the self-defeating thoughts that spring up when we make a mistake, we also have other negative tapes running around in our head. These tapes work like cassette tape or VHS recordings, that play repeatedly sometimes with little provocation and always without our consent. Sometimes it’s just a dreary Monday morning and the end of the semester is nowhere in sight. I am tired, discouraged, and lack my usual motivation and determination. In my head I hear “You cannot do this. You’ll never make it. Go ahead and quit.” And if I don’t press pause, and change that negative thought tape quickly, I will quit.
In my case, one of the tapes that keeps playing when I make a mistake or fail, “Jane, you are stupid, fat, and ugly and you will never amount to much.” Not exactly words of inspiration, much less forgiveness or resilience. In my work with teaching women to build resilience, women have shared soul crushing tapes that play in their head whenever they fail. One tape came from an African American woman who was told she needed to be three times better than anyone else because she was Black, and she was female. Three times better than anyone else? I’ve felt crushed under the lie that as a woman, I needed to be twice as good as the men around me; how could any human manage to be three times better???
Quotation from a coffee mug “Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man”
Another tape came from a successful lawyer who shared with me that, whenever she failed, she was reminded, via the tape that played in her head, that she’d be so much prettier if she lost weight. What?!? She was beautiful as she was. Why would any woman think she needed to lose weight to be pretty and, consequently, successful??? And what does physical appearance have to do with legal skills???? And yet, as women, we live under the burden of these lies daily.
Even microaggressions can become tapes that stay stuck in our heads. A former woman athlete recalled how a man on her team insisted it was “easy for women to become Division I athletes,” totally undermining all the work, time, energy, and pain she endured to earn that D-I scholarship and a starting berth. And the fact that she could recall this barb at a moment’s notice, long after she was finished competing, tells me this demeaning tape had played in her head repeatedly.
These negative and dysfunctional thoughts are especially detrimental because they work like tapes in our heads. Repeating negative thoughts that instinctively pop up when you fail is not good—in fact, it makes the issue worse because now you’re stuck in a rut of stinking thinking, and you are reinforcing and memorizing beliefs that make you feel less than or unworthy. Think about how you memorized your mom’s phone number when you were in kindergarten. You kept repeating it to yourself over and over again until you would never forget it. The same thing happens with the negative thoughts we keep telling ourselves. We need to change the tape from one of negativity and despair to encouragement and support.
Reflect
The tape that plays in my head is that I am stupid, fat, and ugly, and implies that I will never amount to much. Without intentional thinking, that tape played in my head for years every time I fell short of my expectations for myself. I have to admit, the tape is still there, and in my experience, try as I might, the tape does not get erased. However, I have learned to recognize when it starts to play—like recognizing the first bars of a popular song—and crowd it out with positive thoughts. But that takes practice. Lots of practice. And I admit I have to practice drowning out negative tapes daily. And neuroscience tells us our brain naturally hangs on negativity while positivity slides off unless we make a concerted effort to savor it. But here’s the good news: It’s not easy, and it’s not fun, but if I can do it, you can do it. Here’s how.
Here are the four steps to start changing that negative tape:
After you’ve identified the negative tape running wild in your head after a mistake or failure, ask yourself who put those tapes in your head? Hint: it wasn’t you. It may have been so long ago, and you’ve played the tapes to yourself so frequently, you have forgotten, or never considered who put that tape in your head the first time. It could have been a parent, a coach, a boss, a sibling, a teammate, a teacher, or a bully; the important thing is identifying where the tape originated.
The purpose in identifying the tape’s origin is not to seek revenge, or even to practice forgiveness. Both are challenging. Be gentle with yourself and give grace to the other person. No judgment. When in doubt, I like to think the best of people. My guess is that the individual who kept calling me lazy as a youngster was trying to motivate me, no matter how convoluted that sounds. I don’t think motivation works that way—at least not for me—but I will give this individual benefit of the doubt and assume their misguided soul-crushing tape was intended to be helpful rather than hurtful. And right now, I’m working on me, not them, so keep your focus.
After identifying the individual, ask yourself if this person currently has influence over you today. Hint: the bully in first grade is long gone and has moved on (perhaps to bully other people), but the destructive tape remains in your head. Does this person really have power and influence over your life at this point? They likely did in the past, but my guess is while that power has diminished, the negative tapes they instilled are still playing.
A funny example is from my second-grade teacher. That’s right, second grade, which was a long, long time ago. My second-grade teacher said I had terrible penmanship. (Seriously?!? Who gives a rip about penmanship—not writing, penmanship. Ugh.) My penmanship was so bad, I was selected to choose the classmate with the best penmanship. The teacher’s rationale, which she explained to the class, was that my penmanship—shouldn’t we at least call it pen-person-ship???—was so bad, I was not in the consideration set. So, I got to pick the winner. As you might guess, as I progressed through school, my penmanship never really improved, but it didn’t matter (take that, second-grade teacher who will remain anonymous to spare her embarrassment even though I remember her name) because papers were required to be typed. Keep in mind, this was before Word was invented. I carried the ugly penmanship defeating thought throughout my college career until a favorite English professor, who also had terrible writing, proclaimed that bad handwriting is a sign of intelligence and gave the undecipherable handwriting of medical doctors as an example. Hooray. I was finally free of this burden. Every time self-incriminating and defeating thoughts about my messy handwriting started to creep in, I reminded myself—and others if they asked—that bad handwriting is a sign of intelligence. And yes, as my students can attest, my handwriting hasn’t improved with age. And it’s OK. My second-grade teacher no longer has influence over my life, or my thoughts about my worthiness.
- Once you’ve identified who put this tape in your head, ask yourself “is it true?” or “is it helpful?”
Is it motivating you or dispiriting you so you want to quit? Does it build you up or tear you down? Energize you or defeat you? You get the idea.
In my case, I have a Ph.D.—must not be stupid. However, to give you an example of how insidious and prevalent this tape was in my head, I was halfway through my Ph.D. program (i.e., honor student in college, MBA, admission to Law School and graduate school, and success in graduate school) before I realized the individual who claimed to be responsible for my academic success because I was stupid, was no longer around. In fact, this individual had been out of my academic life since high school and had no claim on my academic achievement. It was a major breakthrough to realize I might actually be smart enough to finish a Ph.D. program. And I did. As for fat—my physician tells me my weight range is healthy and I don’t make a living as a model so I’m good looking enough. Take that. Be kind to yourself. As an alternative to is it true, ask yourself is this tape helpful?
But the acid test is one of parenting and friendship depending upon your life stage. Ask yourself, would you say these mean things to your best friend or to your children? When I asked myself this question, I was mortified. I would never say these things to my daughters; it would devastate them. So then, I had to ask, why do I say it to myself? Here is the acid test when evaluating tapes. If you wouldn’t say it to your best friend or child, you have no business saying it to yourself. Game over.
After you’ve identified the negative thought(s), answer the following questions:
- Where did this negative thought come from? Who put it in your head?
- Does this person have any influence over you today?
- Is this thought helpful or motivating?
- Would you say this to your best friend?
- You may not be able to control what other people think about you, but you CAN control what you think about you. Keep it positive.
Practice
Practice using positive quotations, images, songs, mantras, or even smells to crowd out negative thoughts. How did that work? What are your favorite “go to” strategies to squash those negative thoughts when they start to bubble up?
Change the Tape
It is important to note that in my experience, it is next to impossible to erase the tape. I wish I could. I can’t even stop the tape. But I have learned to drown it out with positive thoughts. The negative tapes are still there—they always will be—but now I know when they start to play, I don’t have to listen to them anymore. I can drown them out.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that the tape is more likely to play when I am tired or hungry—in other words, my resources are low. When not fulfilling my basic needs – food and sleep—I don’t have the energy to stop the tape or drown it out. But through experience and practice, I am now able to recognize my physical limitations and be aware that the tape is likely to play because I’m lacking the necessary energy to stomp it down.
Since it is next to impossible to erase the tape or stop it from playing, the best method I’ve found for dealing with these self-defeating thoughts is to crowd them out with thoughts that are helpful. It is as if someone is singing an annoying song that you can’t stand, and they won’t stop. So, you sing louder and block out their song. In a sense, you crowd out the negative by overshadowing it with something else.
Crowding Out the Tape
Reflect
What are the things you say to yourself when you are at your best? Or what are the things your best friend says to you to build you up? Think of these things. Here are a couple of examples my students and I use to replace negative thoughts with empowering ones.
- Empowering songs— One of my favorites is “I’m an overcomer.” I have no idea who sings it or the rest of the lyrics but singing “I’m an overcomer” silences demeaning thoughts.
- Smells—Our olfactory sense (smell) is one of the oldest reflexes embedded in our minds. Even if we can’t identify the smell, we associate it with memories, both good and bad. Some people find the smell of pine trees to be reassuring (holiday memories?). Others like to remember the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking (fond memories of home?). When one of my daughters was away at college, she would head to the department store fragrance counter to smell my perfume and bring back good memories (I hope!) of Mom and home.
- Given my love for written language, I have various mantras or inspirational sayings that I use regularly. When I’m discouraged and the negative tape starts to play, I remind myself that “You can be pitiful or you can be powerful, but you can’t be both. Which do you choose?” When phrased that way, even someone like me who loves to throw a good pity party for herself, chooses power. “I choose power.” And I get back to work.
- Another one of my favorite mantras is “I am confident and determined. I am not fearful nor discouraged, for the Lord my God is with me wherever I go.” (Joshua 1:9) Take that! I cannot count the times I have repeated all of these mantras to myself to overshadow negative thoughts.
Changing the tape—or practicing replacing negative, self-defeating thoughts with positive thoughts, is one of the hardest things I’ve done. I have to practice it every day. Because I’ve been practicing for years, and I mean 20+ years…, I’ve gotten better at shutting down the negative thoughts. But they still come up and I still have to take active steps to intentionally overshadow them. So don’t get discouraged if you can’t get the tape changed right away. Keep practicing. Be intentional about what you choose to think and the thoughts you allow in your mind. You may not be able to control what other people think about you, but you CAN control what you think about you. Keep it positive.
To help me intentionally turn my attention away from negative thoughts and instead, focus on thoughts that build me up, I collect inspirational sayings and hang them where I can see them. How hard is it to change the tape? Hard. I write my mantras on index cards which I put all over my house—taped to my bathroom mirror, in my car, on my computer, in my purse, my backpack, etc., etc., etc. Make index cards of the inspirations that keep your thinking on track and post them everywhere.
Because this strategy has helped me so much and because so many people are discouraged and hurting, I like to actively share positive inspirations with others who need encouragement. We are not the only people who get discouraged. Think about the inspirations that help you make it through tough times and share it with someone else. Who else needs to be inspired? I love sending friends who are going through a rough time an index card with an inspirational saying on it. I’ve had students return to my office upon graduation and show me the torn, dilapidated, index card with the positive affirmation I gave them. It works. And this activity has double consequences; by making someone else feel better, you feel better too.
On a more general level, I like to spread inspiration throughout my environment—where I work, teach, volunteer, and at home. Each Women in Sales class starts with an “inspiration of the day.” Students bring in inspirations and share them with the class. We post them on the wall (large post-it notes) so students can see them throughout the class period. Similarly, at the dog shelter, it can get very discouraging to see precious pups neglected, abused, and abandoned. To keep ourselves as enthusiastic as the forgiving dogs we help, volunteers hang positive post-it notes like “you are making a difference” throughout the kennels to drown out discouragement. Being intentional about what you think and attend to has big payoffs.
