接受你的行动可能会带来正面结果的想法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.

比方说你在考虑将你的墙漆成白色或者乳白色之外的颜色。你的焦虑思维一下跳到负面的预测，认为你可能会讨厌这个颜色，并责备自己浪费了时间和金钱。一种备选想法是你会爱上这个颜色，或者至少非常喜欢它，并且这会给你自信尝试新的想法。

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.

倾向于预测你的行动会带来负面结果是焦虑极其核心的问题。如果你可以在你正在做消极预测时候注意到这种状态，你很有可能消除一大部分焦虑。尽管本书有很多信息，掌握这个简单的原则将会让你朝向解决你的焦虑问题迈一大步。请注意这个概念。

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.

只要你感觉到焦虑，使用这个感觉提示自己练习描述你的负面预期并给出一个备选预期。试着推动你自己思考最好的可能的结果，而不是仅仅是最差的。你不需要完全消除你的恐惧；你仅仅需要考虑不同的选项，硬币的两面，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.

练习：对于一个你喜欢采取的行动，尝试描述你担心的负面结果以及一个备选的可能结果，就像是给墙上漆的例子。如果你大量练习这个技巧，你将开始一个好的习惯。

害怕的结果 Feared outcome=

备选的结果 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：当你尝试切换你的想法的时候，选择一个新的你想要强化的想法是非常重要的。改变一个想法可以看作是尝试改变一个习惯：当你改变一个习惯，你不需要像构建和强化一个新习惯一样花大力气打破一个坏习惯。当你联系新的想法的时候，最终这些新的想法会开始越来越自动化。现在在那些你容易触发旧的想法的场景下，新的想法也会触发了。

Boyes Ph.D, Alice. The Anxiety Toolkit