Why you should try a ‘thought diet’ this January

January is the month when many of us commit to trying to improve our bodies after overindulging in December.

But when it comes to maintaining those improvements, some experts believe we should be thinking less about muscles and diet, and more about the grey matter. This month’s self-help publishing trend is the “thought diet”, which means learning how to cut out the junk thinking patterns that can derail us in work, friendships and relationships, as well as with our own bodies.

More sensible and sustainable than simply cutting out carbs, giving up booze or taking up weight lifting, changing the way you think about yourself and others could have far more benefits for your long-term health.

For a start, it could help you get ahead at work (or into a new, better role) — according to Glassdoor, yesterday was the day people were most likely to search for a new job on its website, and it sees 17 per cent more job applications in January than in a typical month. So, how to kickstart a thought diet? Get reading! A pile of new books are out this month, focusing on subjects from how to be a better listener and becoming less self-critical, to overcoming your negativity bias. So, why not make 2020 the year of being fitter in thought as well as in deed? 

Lend us your ears:

The most impressive of the lot is this book by Kate Murphy, who suggests listening is now so undervalued in our self-obsessed, tech-driven society, it’s having devastating consequences. Do you ever feel you’re not being listened to? Do people interrupt you when you’re talking or vice versa? Do you scroll on your phone when someone is talking? What does the ping of a phone message do to the flow of chatter? Does your mind wander when someone tells a story? Do you notice how people love to bring the topic of conversation back to themselves?

Murphy interviewed hundreds of people about what listening meant to them and how it felt when someone didn’t. She looked at the neuroscience of listening and how brainwaves of people fully engaged in dialogue align and synchronise. She makes a fascinating contrast between what she calls “support” and “shift” responses.

Imagine your colleague tells you that she’s had a terrible journey into work. Do you ask what happened (“support”) or launch into describing your own, worse, journey (“shift”)? If the latter, you’re a conversational narcissist and you stifle conversation. People who perceive they’re not being listened to are less likely to reveal their thoughts and actually become more boring. So develop good questioning skills and be genuinely curious. Other anti-listening scourges include podfasting — playing podcasts at twice normal speed, which actually reduces our capacity to concentrate. Playing music through earbuds at full whack simply damages hearing, as does working in noisy environments like open-plan offices. Too much looking at screens reduces our ability to read important non-verbal cues about emotion like tone of voice, respiration rates and subtle changes in facial colouring and minute muscle tics.

In a nutshell: Take the time to ask more questions, listen to the answers and stop thinking about yourself.

The authors of bestseller Willpower, offer useful insights into why bad luck, bad news and bad feelings are so much more powerful than good ones. We are hardwired to be on constant alert for danger: a person looking at a crowd will instantly spot the one angry-looking face among a hundred happy smilers. Losing money affects us more than winning it. Phobias can be hard to shake. Relationships usually break down when couples behave in negative ways to each other, regardless of how compatible they are. One bad word from the boss is devastating regardless of buckets of praise doled out. Sticks are more potent than carrots. 

In a nutshell: overturn your negativity bias by using the rule of four: experience at least four good things to compensate for every one bad thing.

Andy McNab-meets-Marie Kondo-meets Jordan Peterson: the Major General, who served in the Gulf Wars, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Northern Ireland, gives top tips on improving your potential to succeed by channelling the power of daily discipline. This covers everything from getting up earlier and tucking your bedlinen hospital-corner-style to packing a backpack properly (water bottles full please, crisp new toothbrush) and giving yourself time to think through a crisis.

In a nutshell: Counter-terror tactics for chaotic civilians whose thinking is messier than their bedroom. 

One tiny behavioural change can eventually become a new habit. But to make it work, you must stop judging yourself, break down aspirations into micro-behaviours and embrace mistakes as discoveries. Say you want to start flossing your teeth but keep forgetting: make a note to floss one tooth a day. Carry on until it’s routine. The same applies to eating, exercising and thinking. Fogg, who set up the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford and runs behavioural bootcamps, believes we can all change our habits, but only through making incremental changes.

In a nutshell: Don’t beat yourself up, just take it step by step. 

For a more hands- on guide, try this six-week step-by-step course on using Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy — improve your inner resilience by thinking about specific situations in a different way. Invented in the Fifties by psychologist Albert Ellis, REBT is the lesser-known precursor to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and while there are specific differences, the ultimate aims of both are the similar — it’s not the things in life that cause anxiety, it’s the beliefs you hold about them. Daniel Fryer, who runs his own therapy practice, suggests there are four unhealthy beliefs that hold us back, which he labels as Dogmatic Demands, Dramas, I Can’t Copes and Pejorative Put-Downs.

In a nutshell: If you can shift your viewpoint from an unhealthy to a healthy one, you will be able to handle life’s challenges more easily.