If You Want to Grow PEONIES

...Let's talk about ANTS.

It was long believed that ants were required to help the peonies to bloom. Ants are attracted by the sweet resin exuding from those fist-like  buds. Gardeners are a romantic lot-- generally, and will tell you that the ants are essential to carry off the excess resins, "tickling" the buds to blossom.  Others will tell you to leave the ants in place because of their vital role in the ecology of your peony garden. They know that the ants farm aphids and caterpillars, and keep other noxious insects in check. Luckily, by the time the peonies are blooming and you're gathering a fragrant bouquet to take into your house, the ants have lost interest, having carried most of the sugary goodness away. You can shake off the blooms and the ants will plop themselves into the greenery and soil, off to tickle another bud into blooming.

You might have already guessed, though, that I'm after a different sort of Peony. 

Yes, ladies and germs, I'm here to write to you today about the peonies in the garden of your mind.

Positive Energizing Open New Ideas Evoking Success.  (PEONIES).

If you want to have positive, energizing, open, new ideas evoking success (PEONIES), you're going to have to tackle your automatic negative thoughts (ANTS).

Automatic Negative Thoughts. They're soul-killing, dream-killing patterns of thought that have an evolutionary basis. You may have already read about how the vast majority of our subconscious thoughts run toward the negative. You may already have guessed that I will now reference the early days of humanoids and their need to outrun or outwit the saber toothed tiger for survival. 

These days, fortunately, dealing with saber-toothed tigers seldom make our daily to-do lists. Our modern-day "duties to do" include things like "buy more broccoli," finish the report due on Wednesday, or "Meet with Becky" (Becky being our modern-day equivalent of said saber-toothed tiger). She has an axe to grind with you about just how that report is being written, and you need to go in there and clear the air of a three week misunderstanding.

You've been brooding all morning and glaring at her over the top of your computer screen. Whenever you turn to start on the report, thoughts of how Sarah is out to get you and ruin your chances completely overtake you.

Three weeks ago, when you told her you had convinced the boss to review some ideas you had about reducing waste in the office, she had sniffed, said, "Hmmph!" and walked away.

Because you are a mind reader, and because you know in your heart of hearts that Becky secretly wishes you were dead, and the boss always sides with her, and that you know you shouldn't finish the report anyway because it was a stupid idea anyway, and why bother because even if it was a good idea, Becky is coming for you. 

Last night, as you brooded about it with your buddy BOB, and you told him you were thinking of resigning, he told you that it might just be automatic negative thoughts and sent you a link to this article. In this article, you found a list of Automatic Negative Thoughts.  

Hey look, here they are now:

1. “Always/Never” Thinking - when you think in absolutes. This is digital yes/no, on/off thinking. There is no grey area. There is no nuance.  In this case, Becky always gets the better of you because she's never liked you.

2. Focusing On The Negative - This occurs when your thoughts reflect only the bad in a situation and ignore any of the good things. Its getting 100 reviews back and all you can focus on are the 4 bad ones, forgetting about the 96 positive ones.

3. Fortune-telling - This is where you predict the worst possible outcome to any situation. When you go into a conversation assuming that the other person won’t like what you have to say, you change the way you communicate to usually make it come true.

4. Mind Reading -This happens when you believe that you know what other people are thinking, even though they haven’t told you directly. Taking someone’s silence as “They’re mad at me” is a perfect example of mind reading. They may just be thinking.

5. Thinking With Your Feelings- This occurs when you believe your negative feelings without ever questioning them. Feelings are very complex and often based upon our past stories. Feelings are not always about truth. Feelings are your perception of certain situations.

6. Guilt Beating- Also called shoulding on yourself, guilt beating is when you think words like should, must, ought, or have to to most situations. It’s healthier to say, “I’d like to be able to help them out” instead of “I should help them out”.

7. Labeling - Whenever you attach a negative label like jerk, arrogant, irresponsible, or stupid to yourself or to someone else, you stop your ability to take a clear look at the situation.

8. Personalizing- This happens when you invest innocuous events with personal meaning. “My boss didn’t talk to me, so I must have done something wrong.” There are lots of reasons people do things. You never fully know why people do what they do.

9. Blaming -When you blame something or someone else for the problems in your life, you become a passive victim of circumstances and you make it very difficult to do anything to change your situation.

So you carefully reviewed what happened with Becky and how you may well have gotten yourself off the track. You're now bracing yourself to approach Becky and clear the air. In fact you're about to get up out of your chair when she slips into your cubicle and sits in the empty chair by your desk and says, "Can we talk for a minute?"

It turns out Becky has been harboring some Automatic Negative Thoughts of her own because it slipped your mind that the original idea had been a conversation she started with you, and she has been taken aback at your willingness to steal your thunder.

Having recognized all of the automatic negative thoughts the two of you have had, you decide to work on the report together. It ends up being three times as good and the two of you turn it in three days early.

The boss is so taken with the ideas in your ideas that will save time money and resources that you both get raises and a beautiful bouquet of ...

Petunias.

My apologies to anyone named Becky, and my hope is that you can find the pattern in your own life and keep those ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts) from doing damage to your PEONIES (positive, energizing, open, new ideas evoking success).