So far we have only been making changes in the nonverbal aspects of your experience, without changing the words that an internal voice says. This changes your response without changing or challenging the words that a troublesome voice says. Next we are going to begin to experiment with adding words to change your experience of a troublesome voice. We will begin our experimentation with adding a song, which has both verbal and nonverbal aspects. This is a bit more complex than changing nonverbal aspects alone, because the words of the song may oppose what the troublesome voice says.
If you have two voices in opposition to each other, that will create conflict. Most people have enough conflicts to begin with; we really don’t want to add to that! So
in the exploration that follows, be especially attentive to any response that indicates that some aspect of you objects to what you are doing, and respect that by stopping.
You can try something a little different until you find something that no part of you objects to.
Everyone knows how a song, a jingle, a phrase, or some other auditory ex-perience can get stuck in your head, playing endlessly, and often annoyingly. Trying to stop it is typically not effective. In fact that usually makes it stronger, because as we try to stop it, we devote even more attention to it, when what we want is to pay less attention to it.
The trick is to choose something that is more useful to you than whatever is repeating annoyingly, and a really good choice is some song that has a desired effect on your feelings. You can think of some song that has a positive effect on you, and deliberately sing it to yourself over and over, until it becomes an unconscious back-ground music, a sort of “mantra.”
One of my favorite songs for this is “I’m sitting on the top of the world.” Another is “I got plenty of nothing,” from Gershwin’s musical Porgy and Bess. Another, sung by Rita Coolidge, I have forgotten the title of, but the lyrics go, “You can do what-ever, . . . you want to do whatwhat-ever, . . . you want to, and you’ll never die.”
It doesn’t matter what song you choose, as long as it elicits a feeling state that you find uplifting or mood changing in a way that you like. A song is a great way to establish and maintain a mood early in the day, and it can also change your mood when you find yourself in a mood that you don’t like.
Pause now to think of a troublesome mood that you have experienced repeatedly. . . .
Now think of a song that you find powerful and uplifting, and that you think could be a useful way to change this troublesome mood. . . .
As you continue to hear the song, think of a time when you felt this problem mood strongly, and notice what happens. . . .
Then try a different song, and another, and another, . . . until you find one that shifts your mood in a useful way. . . .
Once you have found a song that you find useful, deliberately sing it to your-self for a while, until it becomes automatic. If you don’t know the words or melody well enough to do this, find them and practice them, so that you can. Once you have done this, all you have to do is start singing the song and it will continue on its own as a background as you turn your attention to other things. When you pause from attending to those other things, you can notice that song playing quietly in the back-ground of your mind, maintaining your good mood.
You can also take a further step to make this connection even more automatic.
If you periodically get into an unpleasant mood in certain situations, or in response
to certain external cues, your can imagine being in that situation, noticing those cues. Then turn on the song that you have chosen, to connect it to the situation and cues, so that they automatically trigger the song. Rehearse this several times right now, and then check later to find out if it has already become automatic, or if you need to practice it some more until it does. . . .
In the earlier part of this chapter, we added music alone, but a song is usually even more powerful, because it has both words and music. Music is processed in one hemisphere of your brain, while the words are understood by the other hemi-sphere, simultaneously activating both hemispheres with different aspects of the same message. This makes it much more powerful than either the melody or the words would be alone.
Caution
As mentioned earlier, when you add a song to your experience, the words of the song may be in opposition to whatever you are already saying to yourself. For instance, if you have been saying to yourself something like, “Everything is going to hell,” and you add the song, “I’m sitting on top of the world,” those two mes-sages are contradictory. This has a potential for creating conflict, and we don’t want to do that.
Sometimes when I first sing a song with words that are significantly different from my current mood, it seems artificial, or I have tears resulting from the con-flicting moods, but often the song quickly takes over and my mood changes.
However, if you experience some discomfort, conflict or incongruence that does not resolve quickly when you add a song, please respect that, and stop what you are doing. You could try choosing another song that doesn’t create conflict. Or you could delay using this approach until you have learned how to add words to your experience without creating this kind of conflict. This will be a major topic in many of the following chapters. Next we will begin to explore some specific ways to talk to yourself that avoid causing conflict.
Try saying the sentence, “What else can I enjoy right now?” to yourself, and notice how it changes what you attend to, and how you feel in response. . . .
That sentence directs your attention toward what you can enjoy in the present moment, rather than the complaints and problems that so often occupy our atten-tion and make us feel bad. Even in the worst situaatten-tion there is always something to enjoy, so this instruction never contradicts your reality. And it also doesn’t contra-dict any grumpy voice that is complaining about all the nasty stuff. It doesn’t oppose it by saying “but,” it just directs your attention to other aspects of your experience, saying “and,” joining what a critical voice might be attending to with noticing what you can enjoy. If you say that sentence repeatedly until it becomes an unconscious mantra it can reorient your life.
Contrast can often clarify and deepen your understanding of how things work.
Notice what happens if you replace the word “enjoy” with “criticize,” “disparage,”
or “be disgusted by” or some other negative word or phrase, just for a short time to notice what that is like. . . .
That sentence directs your attention in a very different way, and could easily result in plenty of unhappiness, or even depression. Many depressed people talk to themselves in this way without realizing it. Attending to what you don’t like results in unpleasant feelings; attending to what you can enjoy results in pleasant feelings.
But there is another subtle aspect of the sentence “What else can I enjoy right now?” This becomes apparent if you delete the word “else,” to get “What can I enjoy right now?” Try saying this sentence to yourself repeatedly, and notice how