Rewiring Negative Thinking Workshop

Workshop Outline

Session 1

Introduction:  Participants will begin to identify and accept their bad habit of negative thinking. They will name this habit, review the stages of competency and learn about the power they have to choose their thoughts. 

They will walk away ready to take responsibility for the changes they want to make in life, let go of any limiting beliefs and outside blame. They will discover that they have the power to decide how they feel.

We will do a brief mindful activity.

Homework:

1. Practice the mindful exercise for at least 5 minutes per day
2. Observe when you begin to have the negative thought and pause and say to yourself “Oh there is that negative thought.

Session 2

Internal Representation: We will review what happens when we have a negative thought (distortion, deletions and generalizations). We will discuss the fight, flight or freeze response and how this further impairs the story we create toward a negative bias.

Homework:

1. Notice the small things you do throughout the day where you distort, delete and generalize.
2. Journal about your observation.

Session 3

Nurture, Appreciate and Limit: We will learn how to nurture these negative thoughts, set boundaries and re-frame them.

Homework:

1. Welcome a stressful thought as an opportunity to practice.
2. Journal any stressful thoughts and write down any deleted or distorted data.
3. Write down a new re-frame to the stressful thought.

Session 4

Bringing it all together:  We will focus on recognizing the accomplishment or reaching conscious awareness and talk about how they can continue on their own path to get to unconscious unawareness (this connects back to session 1 stages of competence).