The 4:8 Principle by Newberry Tommy

Author:Newberry, Tommy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781414341699
Publisher: Tyndale House (eBook)
Published: 2010-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

Head Games

We do all sorts of silly things that fuel our negative emotions. As a result, we end up getting more of what we don’t want. We distort things, we exaggerate things, we amplify our experiences in life, and then we pick the wrong things to dwell on. Philippians 4:8 clearly communicates what we should do: “Dwell on the things that are uplifting. Dwell on the things that are working. Dwell on the things that are worthy of praise.” But frequently, we dwell on just the opposite of what Paul was referring to in this exceedingly practical passage from the New Testament. When you find yourself emotionally low, you can be pretty sure that you’ve been dwelling on what’s not working. In this low state, your mind plays tricks on you. If you’re trying to implement the 4:8 Principle, it is very important to start noticing your emotions and how they spiral quickly upward or downward. This peaked awareness shifts you from being the passenger in your emotional life to being the driver. Only when you notice changes in your emotional life can you begin to rise above the passive choices that fuel negative emotions.

Some negative thoughts stand out more than others. These “really awful thoughts,” or RATs for short, terrorize your potential for joy. In this section, I will teach you how to spot them so that you can have a counterattack plan ready. The purpose of discussing these RATs is to pique your awareness, which will weaken the grip of negativity. After identifying the most common RATs, I will show you how to disrupt, dispute, and then deflect them. Keep in mind that these RATs highlight crooked thinking patterns, not crooked people. See if you can relate to any of the patterns described below.

Amplifiers magnify unpleasant situations with recurrent use of extreme words like always, never, no one, and every time. Virtually nothing in life falls in that excessive category. Frequently, these amplifiers show up in marriage and parenting. Aside from being distortions, these statements cause everyone involved to plummet below the joy zone.

Feelers accept negative feelings as true without questioning them. Sometimes your negative emotions reveal a deficiency in yourself or someone else, and sometimes they don’t. Often what you feel is a simple distortion. Sometimes it is not objective, and it reflects the quality of your thinking more than it does the quality of your life experience. Though feelings are important, they are no substitute for the truth!

Guessers pretend they know what other people are thinking, and then they assume the worst ahead of time. This often triggers an emotional response from the other person, which in turn gets you defensive. This kicks off a cycle that is not very joyful.

Exaggerators transform mole hills into mountains with trigger words like horrible, worst, ruined, shocked, devastated, stunned, and outraged. I like to think of this as “Awfulizing” or “Drama Queen Syndrome.”

Identifiers inject harmless events with personal meaning. They overestimate how the event is related to them. They take things too personally and interpret negative events as personal attacks.

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