接受你的行動可能會帶來正面結果的想法Entertain the Idea That Your Actions Might Have Positive Consequences

You’re thinking about painting your walls a color that’s not white or cream. Your anxious mind is jumping to the negative prediction that you’ll probably hate it and beat yourself up for having wasted the time and money. An alternative is that you’ll love it, or at least quite like it, and it’ll give you the confidence to try new ideas.

比方說你在考慮將你的墻漆成白色或者乳白色之外的顏色。你的焦慮思維一下跳到負面的預測，認為你可能會討厭這個顏色，并責備自己浪費了時間和金錢。一種備選想法是你會愛上這個顏色，或者至少非常喜歡它，并且這會給你自信嘗試新的想法。

The tendency to predict that your actions will have negative outcomes is incredibly central to anxiety problems. If you can catch yourself when you’re making a negative prediction and entertain alternatives, you’ll likely ease a great deal of your anxiety. While there is a lot of information in this book, mastering this one simple principle will take you a very long way toward solving your anxiety issues. Pay close attention to this concept.

傾向于預測你的行動會帶來負面結果是焦慮極其核心的問題。如果你可以在你正在做消極預測時候注意到這種狀態，你很有可能消除一大部分焦慮。盡管本書有很多信息，掌握這個簡單的原則將會讓你朝向解決你的焦慮問題邁一大步。請注意這個概念。

Whenever you’re feeling anxious, use this feeling as your cue to practice articulating your negative prediction and an alternative. Try prompting yourself to think of the best possible outcome, instead of just the worst. You don’t need to completely eliminate your fear; you just need to consider the different possibilities side by side, in an evenhanded way.

只要你感覺到焦慮，使用這個感覺提示自己練習描述你的負面預期并給出一個備選預期。試著推動你自己思考最好的可能的結果，而不是僅僅是最差的。你不需要完全消除你的恐懼；你僅僅需要考慮不同的選項，硬幣的兩面，平手即可。

Experiment: For an action you’d like to take, try articulating both your feared negative outcome and an alternative possible outcome, just like the painting-the-walls example. If you practice this skill a lot, it will start to become a habit.

練習：對于一個你喜歡采取的行動，嘗試描述你擔心的負面結果以及一個備選的可能結果，就像是給墻上漆的例子。如果你大量練習這個技巧，你將開始一個好的習慣。

害怕的結果 Feared outcome=

備選的結果 Alternative outcome=

Important: When you’re attempting to shift your thoughts, picking a new thought that you want to strengthen is essential. Think of changing a thought as like attempting to change a habit: When you change a habit, you don’t so much break a bad habit as build up and strengthen a new one. When you practice entertaining new thoughts, eventually those new thoughts will start to become more automatic. In situations that used to trigger your old thoughts, now the new thought will also be triggered.

注意：當你嘗試切換你的想法的時候，選擇一個新的你想要強化的想法是非常重要的。改變一個想法可以看作是嘗試改變一個習慣：當你改變一個習慣，你不需要像構建和強化一個新習慣一樣花大力氣打破一個壞習慣。當你聯系新的想法的時候，最終這些新的想法會開始越來越自動化。現在在那些你容易觸發舊的想法的場景下，新的想法也會觸發了。

Boyes Ph.D, Alice. The Anxiety Toolkit