Automatic Negative Thoughts

How to tame the monsters in your mind

Experts call them ANTS - Automatic Negative Thoughts and unless you learn how to stop them, they'll ruin your life

By LOUISE ATKINSON
Last updated at 9:15 PM on 26th December 2010

• Comments (83)
• Add to My Stories

Ever dipped into the biscuit tin then decided you’ve ruined your diet so you may as well eat the lot? Or thought that because you didn’t get a promotion this year, you’re destined for failure in your career?

You’re not alone. Even the most optimistic person is not immune to negative thoughts, but for some, the destructive chatter of self-doubt can be relentless.

Psychologists now believe that just as feeling embarrassed can cause a physical reaction (blushing) so self-destructive thoughts can lead to ill-health, weight-gain, poor skin and misery. 

Psychiatrist Dr Daniel Amen has spent a lifetime studying how thoughts influence our appearance, energy and diet success. 

Catch-22: Negative thoughts can make negative things happen

His studies have revealed that by flipping negative thoughts to positive, we can transform our lives for the better.

In his new book Change Your Brain, Change Your Body, Dr Amen identifies the infuriatingly common scourge: the ANT (Automatic Negative Thought), which he describes as ‘the little voices that pop into your head and tell you you’re not good enough, not thin enough, a rubbish daughter, mother, worker’.
A few ANTS, he says, can be managed.

But he warns to watch out for ANT infestations — when thousands of negative thoughts start to take over. 

The answer, he says, lies in simple ANT-eater techniques that stop the bugs in their tracks, ensuring they never return. ‘Your brain is a powerful organ,’ he says. ‘If you see yourself as fat, old, wrinkled or forgetful, you boost production of the stress hormone which affects your health, your weight and your mind. 

‘Negative thoughts can make negative things happen. In the never-ending battles, redemption lies in building your own arsenal of ANT-eater solutions. 

‘Develop an ANT-eater in your brain that can eat up all the negative thoughts that come into your head. Whenever you feel mad, sad or frustrated, write down your ANT, then write down what your ANT-eater would say to that ANT to kill it.

Make a pact with yourself to not listen to your ANTS. If you do this, your thoughts will translate into actions and those actions will cause your body to transform into the body you’ve always wanted. Your body follows your mind. It has no choice.’

Stress buster: Try to put a positive spin on anything you can to raise your mood

NINE SPECIES OF ANT (and ANT-eater solutions)

(Watch out for the red ANTs — these ones really can sting!)

ANT: All or nothing

This is the black-and-white thinking that leads you to believe everything is either all good or all bad. It’s the warped logic that dictates that if you miss one day at the gym you therefore have no self- discipline and might as well give up the whole idea of exercise completely.

ANT-eater: Force yourself to acknowledge that one slip-up doesn’t mean you should give up. If you skip the gym one day, make sure you go the next. 

ANT: Using ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘every time’ or ‘everyone’ 

If you find yourself saying ‘I will never lose weight’ you are acting as if you have no control over your actions. 

ANT-eater: Never say never — put a ban on over- generalised words 

ANT: Focusing on negatives

If you find yourself dwelling on negatives at the expense of positives you’ll be more inclined to give up than to persist.

ANT-eater: Try to put a positive spin on anything you can to raise your mood.

ANT: Thinking with feeling

When you assume your feeling about something is true, you may not question it.

ANT-eater: Think with logic instead — look for evidence to support and challenge your view.

ANT: Guilt 

Using the words ‘should’, ‘must’, ‘ought to’ and ‘have to’ allows feelings of guilt to build up and start to control your behaviour.

ANT-eater: Banish feelings of guilt, do what you can, but not at the expense of your own health or sanity, and use the word ‘should’ only when it suits you.

ANT: Labelling

If you label yourself (‘I’m a loser’) you take away your control over your actions and you’ll start to believe your negative labels. This defeatist attitude will then mean you have a tendency to give up easily.

ANT-eater: Avoid labelling yourself, and flip the labels you’re stuck with (‘I am not a loser’). 

RED ANT: Fortune-telling

Predicting the worst even though you don’t know what will happen (‘I know I’m never going to be able to stick to this exercise programme’). These ANTs are very common and can quickly become an ANT infestation. The problem with fortune-telling is your mind is so powerful it really can make these terrible things more likely.
If you allow yourself to get stressed about something, it can depress your immune system and increase your odds of getting sick. In fact, chronic stress has been implicated in a number of diseases.

ANT-eater: Ask yourself what right you have to be a fortune-teller. You don’t know what the future holds. Instead, be curious about the future in a positive way.

RED ANT: Mind-reading

When you think you know what someone else is thinking (‘he’s looking at my bottom, he must think I’m too fat’).

ANT-eater: You have no idea what people are thinking. If someone looks at you it does not necessarily mean they are judging you. 

RED ANT: Blaming others

It’s toxic to blame others and take no responsibility for your own successes and failures. When you begin a sentence with ‘it is your fault’ it can ruin your life. These ANTs make you a victim. 

ANT-eater: You are responsible for how your life turns out. You can’t keep blaming others. 

SUPER-BOOSTER
ANT-eater solution

If your ANT infestation is proving to be particularly bothersome, try this remedy. Write down your ANT — for instance, ‘my skin is so wrinkly and there’s nothing I can do about it’. Then ask yourself: 

Is this ANT actually true? 
Answer: Yes, I have wrinkles. Then ask: Is there really nothing I can do about it? For instance, can I prevent any more wrinkles coming?

How does this ANT make you feel?
Answer: Sad and old.

Who would you be and how would you feel without this ANT?
Answer: I’d feel great, as if I have more control over how I look. 

Now take your original thought and turn it around and ask: is the opposite of my original thought true? 

Answer: So there is something I can do to prevent wrinkles — I’ll start looking into getting more sleep, cutting back on alcohol etc. 

 Extracted from Change Your Brain, Change Your Body by Dr Daniel Amen, published by Piatkus on January 6 at £12.99. To order a copy (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1341787/How-tame-monsters-mind-Experts-ANTS--Automatic-Negative-Thoughts-unless-learn-stop-theyll-ruin-life.html#ixzz19cNn2vqL

Bill James dishes on Cy Young, Greinke, etc. ...

Posted on: November 23, 2010 2:17 pm

Edited on: November 23, 2010 5:52 pm

Score: 186

Log-in to rate:

• Log-in to rate:

In an interview with CBSSports.com's MLB Facts and Rumors, Bill James indicated that while he would have voted for Felix Hernandez to win the AL Cy Young Award,CC Sabathia should have gotten more love. He also added that the Royals should not trade Zack Greinke unless they get two Greinkes in return.

Bill James is an influential baseball writer, historian and statistician who published the Bill James Baseball Abstract in 1977 and helped to usher in the statistical revolution in full force today. James is responsible for such statistics as Range Factor, Win Shares and Game Score. He was also crucial in the understanding that statistics should be adjusted for park factor. James was hired by the Red Sox in 2003 and continues to work for Boston along with publishing the Bill James Handbook . MLB Facts and Rumors profiled some of James' statistical projections for the 2011 season in late October.

Below is the interview with James:

CBSSports.com: If you had a vote, who would you have selected for the AL Cy Young?

Bill James: I would have voted for [Felix] Hernandez; however, I do think [CC] Sabathia got short shrift in the voting. Sabathia got surprisingly little support, presumably because people wrote him off because of the 91-point difference in ERA between Felix and CC. [Hernandez had a 2.27 ERA, Sabathia 3.18.] But of that 91 points, about 60 points is just a park effect. Hernandez WAS the best pitcher in the league, but I think it was close between Hernandez and Sabathia.

Do you think there is an over-emphasis on defense these days? More and more teams are moving away from the sluggers who can't field to more dynamic players that can. On one hand, this is a move towards making baseball more athletic. On the other, how important is it for a left fielder to be a good fielder if the tradeoff is a 10-20 home run swing?

Well, I wouldn't generalize about what other teams are doing, and I could not say whether there is or is not an over-emphasis on defense. Baseball is about:

• 42 percent hitting,
• 8 percent baserunning,
• 37 percent pitching and
• 13 percent fielding.

Which actually is very close to the numbers that John McGraw put out in 1906; McGraw had pitching at 30 percent, but the game has changed since then, and pitching is more central than it was. 

But these numbers assume a level of competence. I think if you have pitchers, fielders can do a lot to help them keep the score down. If you don't have pitchers, there isn't much the fielders can do. And if you don't have fielders, then you need really, really good pitching to survive.

There's a lot of hype around Field F/X and while it's certainly going to change the game, how significant do you anticipate the changes being? Will fielding finally be able to be quantified in a reliable fashion (or is it already?) or will much of fielding prowess still rely on scouting as opposed to stats?
We can quantify fielding pretty well now. I have a good deal of confidence in the fielding numbers we have now.  

What we do NOT have is the ability to PROJECT fielding reliably. Because we have been looking at batting numbers all of our lives, we know almost intuitively what the range of expectations is. But because the fielding numbers that we have are fairly new to us, we have little ability to anticipate year-to-year variations in performance.

Really, I have no idea what will happen with Field F/X data.   I wish the young people good luck with that.

There's been a lot said about Justin Upton after GM Kevin Towers said he would listen to trade offers for the Diamondback. I read an article by Rob Neyer that essentially put forth the case that there have been many outfielders with Upton's numbers at that age that don't go on to be superstars, and those that are so good at a young age tend to not improve significantly because they are already maxed out on talent. What is your take on that?

If they're giving away Justin Upton, sign me up.

I would have to study Rob's points and research the issue before I would comment on that. Certainly there have been young outfielders who were dominant at a very early age (Cesar Cedeno , Al Kaline , Ted Williams ) who did not improve offensively after that. Upton has not been a dominant offensive player. He was very good one year; the rest of his career, not so good. A 23-year-old hitter 422 games into his major league career... my intuition would be that he would probably improve more often than he would fail to improve. I would guess that if you had 20 Justin Uptons, 15 of them would have better years ahead. But that's a guess.

One thing I noticed while perusing the predicted statlines in your Handbook is the optimism surrounding youngsters like Jesus Montero, Domonic Brown, Pedro Alvarez, etc... I've heard around the internet that the Handbook tends to be too optimistic when it comes to projecting young players with little to none MLB experience. Do you think these concerns are well founded or off base?
If someone has studied the data and can demonstrate that our projections are over-optimistic, of course we'd look at it. If someone speculates that this is true, I'm not really too interested.

Intuitively, I doubt that that is true. Our projection for Jason Heyward last year was extremely accurate -- a few points high on batting average, but an extremely good projection. For Buster Posey, we projected .270 with 11 homers, 54 RBI. He actually hit .305 with 18 homers, 67 RBI. We had projected Jose Tabata at .273. He hit .299. We had projected Tyler Colvin for 4 homers, 17 RBI; he had 20 homers and drove in 56. We had projected Michael Stantonfor .228 with 9 homers, 22 RBI; he hit .259 with 22 homers and 59 RBI. 

As part of the process of producing the Handbook, we look at every projection that we made the previous year, and compare it to what the player actually did. I study those charts every year, looking for any systematic problems. I would be surprised if anyone else actually looks at them as closely as I do after the fact, comparing what the hitters actually did to what we had projected for them, and I would be surprised if we were systematically optimistic on young hitters. 

Other than playing time.

We do systematically use high-end projections on playing time for young players, but that's a choice, and I think it is the only reasonable choice, honestly. If a player MIGHT bat 300 times, we project that he will bat 300 times; if he might bat 500 times, we project that he will bat 500 times. For this reason: that what the reader wants to know is, if this player plays, what kind of player will he be?

We don't have any way of knowing, in October, 2010, how much playing time Domonic Brown will get in 2011. Nobody does, and everybody with any sense knows that. Therefore, trying to guess how much playing time he WILL get is a fool's errand. The question that you SHOULD ask yourself is, "If he does get playing time, how will he play?" If he doesn't get playing time, there's nothing we can do about it.

There's quite a powerful dynamic formed in the Mets with Sandy Alderson as GM and Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi coming in. What do you think of the Mets front office now? Do you think they'll make a positive and major difference, or was Omar Minaya underrated and/or unlucky?
Those are some really competent people there. Part of the problem is that it is surprisingly difficult to use a small-market strategy in a large market.  The gambles that you might take when you don't have options don't look so attractive when you have the money to pursue better options. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to get around that.

Dayton Moore calls you up and says he's going to do exactly what you recommend for Zack Greinke. So what do you do? Would it be fair to say Moore should go after top-end minor leaguers who are close to hitting the bigs to align with their own youngsters or should it be best player available?

Well, you can't keep pushing the future away. At some point you have to embrace it and push the start button. The idea that you can get a team of players who are all the same age or about the same age is a chimera, for the most part, and anyway if you do, that's Cleveland in 2007. So if it's me, I don't trade Zack Greinke unless I can get two Zack Greinke's in return.

Scouting vs statistics still inspires a lot of partisanship. Do you think one day both sides can ever co-exist peacefully?

In my experience, we have co-existed peacefully for years. I think that's more of a media debate than a professionals debate. None of us whose butts are on the line are under the impression that we have the whole thing figured out and everybody who doesn't agree with us is just wrong. In my experience, we're all trying to pick up as much as we can from the other guys.

What I don't understand are those that rely wholly on win-loss and ERA and denigrate "advanced" stats. Technically, W-L and ERA are stats too, except they're much older so people are simply used to them. Why is it so difficult for better metrics to be accepted by these people? Natural resistance to change can't be the only answer, can it?
People aren't resisting change; they're advocating a world view. Republicans are not resisting change when they oppose Democratic ideas, they're advocating their own world view, and the same for Democrats; they're not resisting Republicans. Buddhists are not resisting Christianity. 

I probably see the world backward, but... I've always been surprised at how many people will accept new ideas, how many people will consider what you have to say, and how many people will adapt to a new idea. I have always been astonished by how rapidly our way of seeing the world has penetrated the larger baseball universe. I certainly never expected these ideas to have the audience or the acceptance that they have received.

-- Evan Brunell

Derek Jeter 2017?

Derek Jeter wants to play until 2017 - check this out after the 2011 season


http://sports.espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/columns/story?columnist=oconnor_ian&id=5825039

50 Years Later, a Slide Still Confounds

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Published: September 30, 2010

• RECOMMEND
• TWITTER
• SIGN IN TO E-MAIL
• PRINT
• REPRINTS
• SHARE

The play — a pivotal moment in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series — demanded expert analysis.

Enlarge This Image

Barton Silverman/The New York Times

After watching Mantle’s slide, Keith Hernandez, the Mets’ analyst on SNY, said, “It was like the elephant and the gazelle.”

Keep up with the latest news on The Times's baseball blog.

Go to the Bats Blog

Major League Baseball

• Live Scoreboard
• Standings | Wild Card
• Stats | Injuries

Yankees

• Schedule/Results
• Roster | Stats

Mets

• Schedule/Results
• Roster | Stats

Enlarge This Image

Enlarge This Image

Enlarge This Image

MLB Properties Inc.

The kinescope of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series showed Mickey Mantle’s inexplicable ninth-inning slide beneath the tag of Rocky Nelson, which allowed the Yankees to tie the game.

But when Mickey Mantle slid headfirst back into first base in the top of the ninth inning to avoid a game-ending double play and allow the tying run to score, there was no analyst working in the TV booth with Mel Allen at Forbes Field. There was no one to set up the situation beforehand nor to break down the play after it occurred. There was only one live camera angle and no instant replay.

It was a different world then, and a much simpler one. Allen and Bob Prince made up the World Series TV pairing — one play-by-play announcer from each team, each calling half the game. It was Allen’s turn in Game 7 to call the second set of four and a half innings.

“The old way depended largely on the skill and panache of the local-team announcers” who knew the teams well, said Curt Smith, a sportscasting historian.

Today, that legendary ninth inning, which began with theYankees tying the score at 9-9 and ended with Bill Mazeroski’s home run winning the Series for Pittsburgh, would have been produced far differently on television.

In the top of the ninth, with the Yankees trailing by 9-8 and with one out, Mantle on first and Gil McDougald on third, today’s cameras would have made clear whether thePirates’ infielders were at double-play depth or playing in for a play at the plate. The broadcasters would have debated which of the two was the right strategy. To enhance the end-of-game tension, there would have been rapid camera cuts to Mantle and McDougald, to Yogi Berraat bat and to Harvey Haddix on the mound.

And the dramatic, and confounding, play that followed — Berra’s sharp grounder to first baseman Rocky Nelson for the second out; Mantle’s subsequent elusiveness, moxie and perhaps outright recklessness in then diving safely under Nelson and back into first as the tying run scored — would be synchronized on a split screen and then examined and re-examined. Questions would be asked, answered and asked all over again, on the broadcast.

The 50-year-old kinescope of the game — which The New York Times reported last week was found in Bing Crosby’s old wine cellar — does not do any of that. Why, for instance, didn’t Nelson, upon fielding Berra’s grounder, throw to second to start a double play that would have ended the game?

Why, after instead stepping on first for the second out, did Nelson try to tag Mantle for the third out instead of firing home to Hal Smith, the Pirates’ catcher, for a tag play on McDougald? If he had thrown home, would McDougald have been safe or out? And what was Mantle doing so close to first base anyway? Why didn’t he immediately take off for second when Berra hit the ball on the ground?

Providing that analysis 50 years later was an interesting challenge. Asked to watch and comment on the play, Keith Hernandez, the Mets’ analyst on SNY and a former first baseman, was, more than anything, astonished by Mantle’s evasive slide back into first.

“An amazing presence of mind to do what he did,” Hernandez said while studying the sequence on his laptop at Citi Field. “What a play, huh?”

An e-mail response from Berra, through his spokesman, provided a bit of insight. “I hit the heck out of it,” he said of the one-hop grounder that the left-handed Nelson backhanded before quickly stepping on first.

But in doing so, Nelson’s momentum pulled his left foot into foul territory. “The ball ate him up,” Hernandez said of Nelson.

The camera then shows Nelson turning back to the field, his left arm briefly cocked to throw. But to where? To shortstop Dick Groat, who was covering second? That might mean getting Mantle in a rundown play, but meanwhile the tying run would score easily. To Smith, at the plate? Smith said in a phone interview that he thought Nelson was going to throw home to him so he could tag McDougald and end the game.

“I thought we had a shot at McDougald,” Smith said, adding that he asked Nelson years ago why he did not throw home and that Nelson told him, “To be truthful, I didn’t see you.”

What Nelson did see was Mantle standing right near him, maybe eight feet away, temporarily frozen in a predatory crouch.

“I understand Rocky’s position,” Smith said. “He sees a runner right there and thinks he can get him. He thought he could get Mantle.”

Groat said in a phone interview that it was “easy to say in hindsight” that Nelson should have thrown home. Hernandez said that although Nelson probably had the time to throw home, he might have been thinking, “Oh, my God, there’s Mickey!”

As Hernandez watched the final part of the play unfold in slow motion, he saw that Nelson, as he moved to tag Mantle, was too far from the bag, with his feet on the outfield side of first base. Still, Mantle must have looked to him like a certain out — except that Nelson was not a nimble match for the still-quick Yankee star, who was a week from turning 29.

“It was like the elephant and the gazelle,” Hernandez said.

For a split second, Mantle and Nelson eyed each other. Mantle made an initial move toward first, then gave a head fake toward second. He quickly reversed himself, sliding and sprawling toward first on the inner side of the bag with his left hand reaching out.

Nelson lunged forward, angling himself toward Mantle instead of moving to the base.

“I would have caught him right in front of the bag and blocked him,” Hernandez said of Mantle.

There were numerous New York newspapers in 1960, but their accounts of the play were not elaborate. However, Mantle, who died in 1995, did tell The Daily News that he started for second base when Berra hit the grounder but knew that Nelson “had me dead either way, so I ducked down and went underneath as he tried to tag me.”

Of course, even if Mantle had been tagged as he dived back to first, is it possible McDougald would have already crossed home plate, which would have meant the run still counted? One more question that is not easy to answer.

Looking back 50 years, Hernandez said that he would have done what Nelson did — step on first immediately, then try to tag Mantle to end the game instead of throwing home. “I can’t blame the guy,” he said of Nelson, who died in 2006. “You have to make the play. It’s right there in front of you.”

“Kudos to Mantle,” he added. “What a deke.”

A version of this article appeared in print on October 1, 2010, on page B11 of the New York edition.

Pristine film of '60 Series Game 7 found

• Email
• Print
• Comments65

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Bing Crosby often found himself dreaming of the Pittsburgh Pirates, too, even while on vacation in Paris during the 1960 World Series.

His zealous support and superstition wound up being a good thing for baseball fans: Found in his wine cellar was film of the deciding Game 7, in which Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending homer to beat the New York Yankees, that was thought to be lost forever.

It was thought that one of the greatest games ever played had survived only through radio broadcasts, grainy photographs and the written word. The five reels have since been transferred to DVD, and fans will get a chance to view the game during the offseason on the MLB Network.

The New York Times reported in a story published in Friday's editions that the complete NBC broadcast had been discovered in Crosby's longtime home near San Francisco.

The silver-tongued crooner, whose recording of "White Christmas" has sold millions of copies worldwide, was part owner of the baseball team from 1946 until his death in 1977. But the avid sportsman was such a nervous wreck watching the Pirates that when they played the Yankees in the World Series, he went on a European vacation with his wife, Kathryn.

"He said, 'I can't stay in the country. I'll jinx everybody,' " Crosby's widow said.

It was thought that one of the greatest games ever played had survived only through radio broadcasts, grainy photographs and the written word. Then in December, while Robert Bader was combing through tapes and reels of Crosby's old TV specials, the vice president of Bing Crosby Entertainment stumbled across two gray canisters in a pile stretching to the ceiling.

They were labeled "1960 World Series" and looked as though they hadn't been touched in years. An hour of searching revealed three more reels.

Bader screened the 16-millimeter film and realized it was the complete broadcast of Game 7, with the Yankees' Mel Allen and Pirates' Bob Prince calling the action. The conditions of the wine cellar -- cool and dry -- meant that the film had survived in pristine condition.

"I had to be the only person to have seen it in 50 years," Bader said. "It was pure luck."

Crosby couldn't bear to watch the game live, although he did listen by radio while in Paris, so he had hired a company to record the broadcast by kinescope. The early relative of DVR meant that he could go back and watch the 2-hour, 36-minute game later if the Pirates won.

The five reels have since been transferred to DVD, and fans will get a chance to view the game during the offseason on the MLB Network. Bob Costas is set to host the special, which will include interviews with former players and other additional programming.

"Bing Crosby was away ahead of his time," said Nick Trotta, senior library and licensing manager of Major League Baseball Productions, the sport's archivists. "It's a time capsule."

The game at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh that October day was filled with high drama.

The Pirates scored four runs in the first two innings off Yankees starter Bob Turley, then watched New York score a run in the fifth and four more in the sixth, when Yogi Berra's home run gave the Yankees the lead. Two more runs in the eighth made it 7-4.

Pittsburgh rebounded with five runs in the bottom half, pulling ahead on Hal Smith's three-run homer, before New York tied the game in the ninth on a heads-up baserunning play by Mickey Mantle that allowed Gil McDougald to cross the plate.

Minutes later, Mazeroski stepped into the batter's box leading off the ninth inning. With one ball and no strikes, he connected with Ralph Terry's pitch and drove the ball over the left field wall. The Pirates poured out of the dugout, the Yankees stood in disbelief, and Mazeroski rounded the bases after the first game-ending home run to win a World Series.

Only later did Crosby get to see the spectacle unfold, in the comforts of his own home.

"It was such a unique game to begin with," said the Pirates' Dick Groat, the 1960 league MVP who will turn 80 in November but remembers the game as if it happened yesterday. "It was back and forth, back and forth. It was unbelievable."

Almost as unbelievable as finding the long-lost film of it in a wine cellar.

Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press