self-discipline and emotional control workbook

©1994, 2006 Career Track Inc. All rights reserved. CareerTrack and CareerStore are registered trademarks of CareerTrack Inc.Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and Canadian Trade-Marks Office. Except for the inclusion of brief quotations in areview, no part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-copying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from CareerTrack.

PART ONE

CONTROL

SELF-DISCIPLINE

AND

HOW TO STAY CALMAND PRODUCTIVEUNDER PRESSURE

TOM MILLER, Ph.D.

www.careertrack.com • 1-800-556-3009

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Preface

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About this programSelf-Discipline and Emotional Control was recorded live during a series of CareerTrack seminars. Every effort hasbeen made to retain the spontaneous flavor of Dr. Tom Miller’s presentation. At times the unedited language is bothcolorful and earthy.

About the workbookBecause of the visual and interactive nature of Tom’s presentation, we felt the development of a new workbook wasan essential element of the total program. As part of this concept, new explanatory pages have been added and partsof the original workbook, as used in the live seminar, have been expanded.

Since the workbook is used quite extensively in the seminar, this presented a problem with the numbering sequence.We have addressed this by using a numbering and lettering system that we hope you will find easy to follow. Anypage that is part of the original workbook is either a number or a combination of a number and letter (11, 11A). Any lettered page (A, B, C) is an addition to the original seminar workbook and contains necessary and illustrativeinformation.

As Tom says ... “It’s all there in the workbook,”so please, don’t skip any pages.

Program Overview

B Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Why is this program so important?

Learning to change your behavior, permanently, is one of the most important skills that you can develop. Without that ability, any other self-improvement program, seminar, audiotape, videotape or book will be essentially useless. You will not change your behavior patternsunless you know how. And that is what Self-Discipline and EmotionalControl is all about.

Program objectiveThere is only one objective of this program:

• Dramatic performance improvement

The two most important variables in behavior change

1. Forcing yourself to behave differently from how you feel• Putting aside the discomfort

2. Generating the power and intensity within yourself to:• Turn your intentions into reality• Make the changes you want in your life

Rational-emotive behavior therapy: Developed by Dr. Albert Ellis, this is the formal name of the system contained in this program.

The Tom before the storm.

How It Begins

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There are four parts to any experience1. Event

2. Meaning/interpretation

3. Feeling

4. Behavioral response

What you will know at the end of the program that youdid not know beforeAfter this program, you will know, now and for all time, that events, whatever they may be, do not cause the reactions you experience. You do!

Less than 1 percent of 1 percent of all the people in the world understand this essential point.

Who causes you to feel the way you feel? You do!No one has the power to determine your emotional and behavioral reactions but you.

Two myths of normal behavior1. It is an option to have others change.

2. If others won’t change, you can transfer them or transfer yourself.

That’s not a hard question.

Program Keys

D Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Premises• Anything that can be learned can be unlearned.

• The way you behave is directly influenced by how you feel.

• The way you feel is always and only created, controlled and maintained by the interpretations made in your mind.

• The way you feel and behave is never caused by the way others treat you or the events that happen to you.

Two keys to dramatically improvingyour performanceGetting reasonably upset instead of overly upset will give you:

1. Choice

2. Control

The importance of repetition to learning• Your horse does almost everything ... except when you are learning a new skill.

• Your rider handles learning.

• It is only through conscious repetition of new, desired learning that the horse takes over (eats the thought) fromthe rider and generates a new, automatic response (both feeling and behavior).

Don’t worry. You’ll catch on.

How It Begins

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Program concepts

1. RiderThe neo-cortex of the brain.The conscious center that hears what you are thinking and can intellectually control your behavior — which is just the first step in the change process.

2. HorseThe lymbic system of the brain. Stores and uses learned, not-conscious information and actions, andcontrols your feelings.

The Rider

The Horse

Your Horse

F Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Important facts toknow about your horse

• Whenever your horse runs into something new, it codes it as wrong.

• You can have opposing thoughts in your horse and rider (consciousand unconscious) at the exact same time.

• You will always get the emotional reactions that are logical for theway your horse is talking.

– The example of driving in England

Sometimes it means bent.Sometimes it’s personal.

• The goal of your horse is to remain unchanged until you die.

• Horses almost always win.

• The way your horse talks to you determines how you “feel.”

• Your horse knows all the right phrases to “drop your pants.”

• The thought processes of your horse never improve.

• Power is the only thing that your horse understands.

Your Horse

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Behavior change

In learning how to get your rider to control your horse and eventually get the horse to “eat” the new learning, youhad better keep in mind your objectives:

• Get rid of unwanted behavior.

• Install desired behavior.

• Pass the new interpretation from the rider to the horse so that the behavior and the emotions become automatic.

• By the time you finish this program, you will finally know how to break your horse.

Time

Tone

Face

Program note: Don’t say up!

During the course of this program you will hear this over and over. And you will, no doubt, be asking yourself,“What the heck is this all about?” So, here it is.

Essentially, by attempting to substitute the gesture pictured above for the word “up” in any sentence in which itwould normally be, and then noting how difficult that substitution is, you can understand how hard it is for yourrider to overcome your horse’s habits, no matter how often this new behavior is reinforced and, in the case of Tom,how loud that reinforcement is.

Besides, it’s fun.

Your Horse

H Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

How It Begins

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The four irrational thinking styles1. Demandingness

2. Awfulizing

3. I Can’t Stand It-itis

4. Condemning and Damning

The sentence that drops my pantsThat event (whatever it was) shouldn’t have happened, it’s awful that it did, I can’t stand it, and somebody aroundhere needs to be condemned and damned as rotten and worthless — let’s see, is it me, is it you or is it the way the world works?

We have to suffer the results of the lies our horses tell us.

Reasonably upset

Overly upset

Awfulizing

2 Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Program assumptionsIn order to understand this system, it is essential to realize that what is said is exactly what is meant.

Here are two fundamental assumptions:

1. 100 percent = All

2. Negative = Bad

The logical deduction: Bad (negative) things that can happen to me range from .001 degrees of badness up to themaximum 100 percent. They cannot go over 100 percent.

A list of bad things that have happenedor could have happened to me*

l.

2.

3.

4

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11. Frequent

12. Worst ever

13. Worst possible

* The only restriction is that those bad events cannot happen physically to your body.

Awfulizing

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Transforming awfulizing: the Johnny Carson ScaleAs a reasonable person, you may be asking yourself, “What in the world does Johnny Carson have to do with thisscale business?” During the monologue. Johnny would invariably bring the audience in on a joke by saying some-thing such as, “Boy, it was hot in California today.” The audience responded, “How hot was it?”

When something negative happens to you, ask yourself, “How bad is it?”

If you have a sensible scale to measure how bad things are, then you can decide that some event (“A”) is approximately a certain percentage bad. After you train your horse to use the scale, it will automatically give you a response that’s logical for the percentage. Then, because you won’t be over- or underreacting, your behaviorwill be reasonable for the situation.

THE BODY SCALE100%– worst

95 – 4 limbs cut off90 – 3 limbs cut off85 – 2 limbs cut off80 – dominant arm cut off75 – non-dominant arm cut off70 – 1 hand cut off65 – 1 foot cut off60 – 3 fingers cut off55 – 3 toes cut off50 –45 – 4 broken limbs40 – 3 broken limbs35 – 2 broken limbs30 – dominant arm broken25 – non-dominant arm broken20 – badly sprained ankle15 – laceration (4 stitches)10 – cut

5 – bruise1 – small bump0 –

I Can’t Stand It-itis


Please read, sign and date the followingI fully realize and accept the fact that I’m living proof that I’ve stood everything that’s ever happened to me. I’mgoing to be able to stand and handle everything that’s going to happen to me except the one thing that’s going to kill me.

( / / )Signature Date

Demandingness

A key pointEvery time you get yourself overly upset, you are DEMANDING something. Please read, remember and sign thefollowing:

I, being of sound mind and body, do fully realize and admit that I do not, haven’t ever and won’t ever RUN THEUNIVERSE.

( / / )Signature Date

The sentence that keeps my (pants)_______up.That event (whatever it was) should have happened, and it’s about ____ percent bad, and I can stand a ____.

Demandingness

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The bi-level split

Demandingness is the inaccurate use of the six partners:

• Should • Have to • Ought

• Got to • Need to • Must

Nondemandingness, on the other hand, is composed of some selection of:

• Wishing • Practicalities • Ethics • Probably

• Wanting • Sensibilities • Morals • Expect

• Preferring • Values • Desiring

• It would be • Etiquettebetter ifs

Demanding words and phrases are only used to describe reality. Things should have happened because they havehappened.

This is not a tough question!

Notes

4B Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

PART TWO

CONTROL

SELF-DISCIPLINE

AND


Self-Esteem


Self-esteemA system that attempts to measure your value as a person or your self-worth.

The clotheslineTo examine the system of self-esteem, imagine there is a room, divided in half by a fat cable; it looks and works likeone of those old-fashioned clotheslines with pulleys on each end. The two parts of the room represent the two partsof the self-esteem system.

The two components of self-esteem1. What you think other people think about you ... or how much you think these other people care about you.

2. What you think of the behaviors or traits you “do.” This is called “the doing side of the room.”

• Traits are things such as brave, clean and thrifty.

• Behaviors are more specific, such as how fast you run the hundred, or how well you cook eggs.

“the people side of the room”

“the doing side of the room”

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Self-Esteem

The wiresIn this room, there are also many thinner wires running from side to side, adding additional areas of division.

Each small wire represents• A person you know (A-E)• A behavior/trait you do (1-5)

E

D

C

B

A

1

2

3

4

5

Self-Esteem


The kegs

In your room of self-esteem, each wire has a miniature beer keg on it. The keg looks like this from the side and

this from the front, and has a hole drilled through the middle . This allows the keg to slide along the wire.

The rating systemIn order to use the room, the wires and the kegs as an organized system, assign the left wall of the room to zero onthe scale and the right wall, 100. Between the two walls are the range from zero to 100.

0 25 50 75 100

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E

D

C

B

A

1

2

3

4

5

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Action step1. Pick five people you know and write their names by the letters.

2. Pick five of your behavior traits and write them by the numbers.

Self-Esteem

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E

D

C

B

A

1

2

3

4

5

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Self-Esteem


Where do the kegs go?The next essential step in examining the process of self-esteem is to figure out where the kegs are placed on the scale— closer to zero, or 100?

Starting with the “people” side of the room, take Wire A and ask yourself, “On the average, how much do I think thisperson cares about me?” If the answer is “a lot” put the Person A keg somewhere in the 90s. Keep repeating this process for the remainder of your “people” wires and draw in the appropriate keg positions.

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E

D

C

B

A

1

2

3

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5

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Self-Esteem

How the kegs work

Assume that Person A gets very upset at you* and says “Get out of my life — I never want to see you again!” A nor-mal reaction would be for Person A’s keg (how much you think Person A cares about you) to go down, in this case,50 points. Since the keg started at 95 on the scale, after the drop it would settle at 45.

Your room would now appear like this:

* Who really gets the other person upset? Right — he or she does.

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E

D

C

B

A

1

2

3

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5

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Self-Esteem


The equationT.V. + D.T. = T.

The only variable?

You have changed one variable in the intricate and interdependent system of self-esteem. And yet, because that one,uncontrollable variable changed (how you think someone else cares about you), your self-esteem has fallen to thesame level of the barrel of Person A.

You completely forget about anyone or anything else!

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A

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Patterns of Thinking

Tunnel visionSeeing only that which is directly in front of our noses. With so much pressure and emphasis on what happens there,it is easy for your nose to get “bent.” Tunnel vision is caused by your horse putting the blinders on.

Dichotomous thinkingThis is thinking in all-or-nothing terms. Things are either very good or very bad; all black or all white. In dichoto-mous thinking, there is nothing in between and no shades of gray. If you think this way, then in the example, PersonA’s keg does not stop at 45, it keeps right on going all the way down to zero. And your self-esteem goes right alongwith it.

This is a literal translation of “putting yourself down”! This is what you get when you allow yourself to be drawn inby tunnel vision and dichotomous thinking. You may have been wondering what the “T” stood for in the equation atthe top of Page 10.

The “T” stands for trouble, and now you understand why.

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A

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Emotions

11A Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

EmotionsYour horse has the ability to bring out these powerful, and extremely negative, emotions in you with a simple flickof the hoof:

• Hurt

• Inadequate

• Depressed

• Anxious

• Guilty

The male equivalentThe male horse has the unique ability to take all of the negative emotions listed above and instantaneously translatethem into one powerful, but still negative emotion: anger.

Remember, the purpose of the horse is to interpret whatthings mean.

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My Top 40 Sheet

The specific instance kegAround each of your kegs is a dotted keg that responds to a specific instance of behavior. Whenever anyone getsupset with one of your dotted kegs, ask:

• Is this person on my Top 20 VIP list?

– If the answer is “No” ...

– If the answer is “Yes,” ask, “Did any of the other 19 kegs move?”

Remember, don’t trust your feelings. Be hard-nosed, literal, precise and accurate.

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Notes


PART THREE

CONTROL

SELF-DISCIPLINE

AND


Self-Acceptance


The assumption of self-esteem• It is possible to measure, rate or evaluate a person and assign a value level to that individual.

• In order to do that, you had better know the following:– Present behavior– Past behavior– Conscious motivation– Unconscious motivation– Consequences to others– Consequences to you– Really know how much other people care/think about you.

The definition of self• The sum total of all the experiences, both internal and external, encountered by any person during his or

her lifetime.– A person averages one billion experiences in any 20-year period.– On average, and with a great deal of motivation, most people are aware of 40 percent of their

total experiences.– Out of that 40 percent, the average person can actually recall only 1 percent.

The true questionKnowing what you know, and what is required that you know, is it really possible to rate your “self” on an arbitrary scale?

Obviously, the answer is no!

Program Notes on Self-Acceptance

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What you can be

The three questions of “self” that can be addressed are:• Aliveness• Existence• Beingness

You either “are,” or you “are not.” To be “are not” is to be dead, in which case the rest of this program will be of very little interest to you.

A concept that worksYou are far and away too complex to even begin to think about trying to “know” the “all” of you. And because youcan only really know a small fraction of your experiences, motivations, conscious and unconscious behaviors, consequences and, most unknowable of all, how others really think or care about you, then you had better accept that you, as a person, cannot ever be rated!

The two-room modelIn the system of self-esteem that you explored, you began with the assumption that it was possible to measure “self.”You used approximations to determine how much you thought others cared/thought about you and how well youbehaved. Somehow, you added these two things together and came up with an “educated guess” as to how worth-while you were. Since you probably thought in a dichotomous fashion, you came to one of two conclusions: Either I am worthwhile, or I am a worthless piece of “stuff.”


12C Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Homework: a room with a viewTake the room that you’ve constructed for your attempted measurement of your self-esteem and construct anotherroom on top of it. This is called the upstairs room. The floor is built out of six inches of crystal clear plexiglass. Thisimpermeable layer allows you to look back and forth between the two rooms, but it does not allow any movementfrom one room to the other.

The two-room model now looks something like this:

Your “self” is now sealed in the upstairs room. There is a physical separation. Your “self” cannot be affectedby what happens in the room below. There is no longer any dependent relationship between:

1. How much you think other people think/care about you

2. How well you do on your behavior/trait wires

Upstairs room

Your “self”

The plexiglass floor

Downstairs room

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Self-Acceptance

The self-esteem beliefIn self-esteem, the belief is that you must (need to) get lots of love, acceptance and approval and that you must(need to) behave very competently. If these needs are not met, you are a worthless piece of stuff.

The self-acceptance beliefIt is not possible to be worthwhile, worthless or anywhere in between. It is only possible to be!You want to give and get lots of love, approval and acceptance.You want to behave very competently.

The keyThe key to understanding and embracing this is simply knowing the difference between a want and a need.

Need (must): something without which you will die.

Want: everything else

Your horse thinks everything that you want is really a needand will tell you that. Stop the lies.

12E Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Putting it all together

Does this mean I don’t care aboutwhat goes on in the downstairs room?

No. You had better still care. Observe and evaluate, as best you can, how you are doing and how you are gettingalong and relating with the significant people in your life. This will guide you as you try to improve, something thatall of us want to do.

A reasonable goal in life is to try to get as many of your kegs as close to 100 as you can. The fun in life is the challenge in achieving small, continual steps of improvement.

Why?The higher the kegs go, the closer you will get to your five major goals in life:

1.Survival

2.Increasing your pleasure and decreasing your pain

3.Living socially with others

4.Having various degrees of intimacy or closeness with some of those others

5.Having some personally meaningful involvement in your vocational or avocational activities


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Homework

The ABCs

In Albert Ellis’s construct, any event can be broken down into:

A = activating event

B= beliefs

C = consequences

Cl = feelings

C2 = reaction

In the story about the flowers, the way the female feels is determined by what she thinks the male’s motivation is. AsTom has shown, the male’s motivation can be one of several things:

• He could be expressing his affection.

• He could be feeling guilty over something he has done.

• He could be trying to get lucky.

How can any one event cause two radically different emotional and behavioral reaction patterns?

• It can’t.

• Your horse interprets the event and tells you how to feel.

Learning and relearningThe essence of self-discipline and emotional control is learning how to relearn. Specifically, you are interested inthose beliefs that cause you to overreact emotionally or behave in ways you wish you didn’t. At this point in time,you are an expert at causing yourself to overreact because you have been doing it for years.

You are at point X on the learning/relearning curve.

• The broken line is the learning curve. It has no previous learning in front of it. The curve begins at W and endsat X. Point X means that you are an expert at a particular action or behavior — in your horse.

• The dotted lines (X to Y to Z) are the relearning curves. XYZ is the process of changing an existing habit into anew, different, desired habit.

• Point Z is the goal. This is where and when your horse will automatically give you the new responses that yourrider has been relearning.

• You cannot get to Z without going through X and Y.

The Yellow Brick Road


This means you have to fight and win the war with your horse.

learningcurve

relearningcurve

W Y

XZ

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A play exampleTo change your response to a specific situation, you can put the events into a screenplay format and then begin the rewrite.

A = (whatever the situation)

B =

Cl = the feeling you don’t like

C2 = the behavior you don’t like

Determining the lines in your screenplay is the same as figuring out what “B” is. You will see that some of the lines(thoughts) make sense and some of the lines make non-sense. Your horse is unable to tell the difference.

You had better

1. Determine what the lines are

2. Determine what lines don’t make sense

3. Understand why these lines don’t make sense

4. Get some new lines

5. Understand why the new lines are much more sensible

Play #l Play #2

A = the situation Da = the same situation

B = sense + non-sense Db = sense + sense

Cl = emotions you don’t like El = more desirable emotions

C2 = behaviors you don’t like E2 = more desirable behaviors



The first halfTake the sense in Play #1 and bring it over to Play #2. Then, change the non-sense in Play #1 into sense, and alsoput that into Play #2. With this new combination of sense + sense, a different emotional response will emerge forPlay #2.

The first task is to get both plays written out on paper. Practice and understanding of the ABCs in this program isvery important. At this stage of your practice, it is only important that your rider believes that what is said about andin Play #2 makes excellent theoretical and practical sense.

Remember, just intellectually believe.

On the relearning curve, you are entrenched at Point X. You are an expert at Play #1. Going from X to Y involves:

1. Figuring out the ABC (Play #1)

2. Identifying the sense and the non-sense in Play #1

3. Understanding why the non-sense is non-sense

4. Understanding why the new sense makes sense

5. Writing the old sense and the new sense into Play #2

6. Intellectually believing the new sense is much more sensible than the non-sense you started with

7. Deciding what emotional responses the new combination of thinking would cause and writing them in El

8. Deciding and writing out what you would like your new behavior to be if your emotions were those written in El

This is the first half of the change process, going from X to Y and gaining the knowledge. Now comes the second half.

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The second halfThe essential element for winning the second half is practice:

• 30 seconds a day– In the chair– Under the covers

• Practice for 30 days

1. Design a symbolic/funny image to flip your horse

• Horses are not very powerful when they’re on their backs

2. Start “Spock” training

• 90 percent Spock, 10 percent Clint

3. Memorize Play #2 (your horse has already memorized Play #1)

4. Imagery practice/rehearsal

A. Picture Da (the event you want to change your reaction to)

B. Flash symbolic/funny image to flip your horse

C. Picture Spock and Clint

D. Think Db (the new way you’re going to think)

E. Feel yourself feel El (your new desired emotion)

F. See yourself do E2 (your new, desired behavior)

5. Biased instant replay

• Immediately do Step #4 (imagery practice/rehearsal)

6. Real-life practice! Don’t wait to feel comfortable.

Fake it ‘til you make it.

Getting to Z

With each real-life practice, the anxiety your horse automatically pumps out gets less and less. As you continue withthis practice, you’ll produce the reaction you desire in faster time, eventually bringing your horse under control andhaving your horse “eat” the new behavior.

The end of the learning curve: the Yellow Brick Road.

Through practice you will reach Point Z on the relearning curve and your horse/rider picture will look like the figurebelow. You’re at the end of the second half. You now automatically get the new, desired emotion. You have changedyour horse so that it is now working for you.

You’ve fought the war and won.

This is how it happens.

The major point is that you have to do it — it won’t do it for you.



W Y

X Z

(you made it)

self-discipline and emotional control workbook

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