Motivational Magic Magazine #27 (July 2025)

by Patricia Tallman | Jul 31, 2025 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

I found the work of brain expert Dr. Daniel Amen to really hit home. I can’t wait to hear what you think of it. His list of the Top 9 Automatic Negative Thoughts certainly are familiar to me. Recently, I was hitting some very low lows due to the news in the world and my own current struggles. As I have often said, when you are working on your own development, teachers will appear. The 2 who have appeared for me recently are Dr. Amen and Dr. Joe Dispenza. I have included links for their books in the end notes of the MoMag.

Dr. Amen talks about the ANTs, and Dr. Dispenza teaches how to heal from them. I will be combining the work I find effective for you.

Wishing you effective healing and deep joy!

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Your Morning Motivation

This section will be a thought to help you set yourself up for a more purposeful day. It can be a very simple thing to add a bit of focused intention to your day.

How to use this section:

Pick one thing to focus on today. I’ll make a suggestion below, but it can be whatever is right for you.
Write it down somewhere you’ll see it several times a day. Bonus if you add in why you chose it and how it will make a change in your day/life.
Set a timer on your phone, 4x today to look at your intention.
At the end of the day write down how it went, what did you notice, and what you might want to try tomorrow.

Choose 10 moments from yesterday and make a list. If you feel like expanding on them, do! Look for something you learned, something you enjoyed, or something you appreciated in each of those moments. I have lived another day. I have seen what I’ve seen. And I have given my life a voice by writing it down.

Article of the Month

To feel better and have a more positive experience in life, we first have to deal with the ANTs.

I learned this picnic-y advice from Dr. Daniel Amen, a famous brain expert. And while, yes, ants are annoying, and sometimes painful, the ANTs Dr Amen is talking about are devastating. They ruin lives. Those of us who love personal development sure aren’t going to be a victim of these asshats!

In his book Change Your Brain, Change Your Life Dr. Amen talks about Automatic Negative Thoughts or ANTs.

The human brain tends to focus on negative experiences, emotions, and feedback more than positive or neutral ones. This negativity bias is thought to have evolved as a survival mechanism, helping ancestors detect potential threats. In today’s world, this bias can manifest in ways that are often unhelpful to mental health and overall well-being, to say the least.

The more we focus on the negative, the more the Reticular Activating System will seek out negative experiences for us.

Since this has been going on for eons, we have been handed a brain that lets negative thoughts stick like Velcro and positive thoughts slide off like water on Teflon.

Let’s look at the top 9 ANTs.

All-or-nothing thinking: Seeing things in black and white terms, where there is no middle ground.
Overgeneralization: Drawing sweeping conclusions based on a single negative event.
Focusing on the negative: Dwelling on the bad aspects of a situation while ignoring the positive ones.
Fortune-telling: Predicting negative outcomes without sufficient evidence.
Mind-reading: Assuming what others are thinking, usually in the negative.
Labeling: Attaching harsh or derogatory labels to yourself or others.
“Should” statements: Using “should,” “must,” or “ought to” that create feelings of guilt and pressure.
If-Only / I’ll-Be-Happy-When: Dwelling on the past or longing for the future, believing happiness depends on certain conditions being met.
Blaming: Shifting responsibility for problems onto others or external circumstances.

Most of us can see that we have fallen prey to these ANTs at one time or another. Do you identify a few that seem to be particularly familiar?

ANTs can negatively impact your mental well-being by:

Fueling anxiety and depression: They trigger stress hormones and can contribute to a cycle of negative emotions. They are amping up your Fear Dragon!
Distorting your perception of reality: ANTs can lead to a skewed view of yourself, others, and the world around you. And not in a good way.
Hindering personal growth and relationships: They can discourage positive action and lead to strained relationships.
Reinforcing negative self-beliefs: ANTs can solidify negative core beliefs about your self-worth and capabilities.

Now, I am devoted to helping you sherlock what is holding you back. I hope you can see a few things so far you could work on not doing anymore. But how?

Dr Amen found great success for his patients using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which includes these key steps:

Becoming aware of your ANTs: The first step is to recognize when these thoughts occur,
Challenging the thoughts: Questioning the validity of these thoughts and asking if they are accurate. Is this true? Could there be another explanation? What thought would feel better?
Replacing negative thoughts with more balanced or helpful ones: Developing a more positive and affirming inner dialogue.

I am putting a link to Dr. Amen’s book at the end of the magazine, in case you’d like to read more.

You got this!

Our Quest Travel Adventures

Glenn and I were very excited to explore the South Island of New Zealand more slowly, going where we felt drawn to go.

After 2 weeks in the Nelson area to complete some detailed work for my Magical Living community, we were ready to head further south.

Our first significant stop was in Christchurch where we stayed a couple of nights visiting Bill and Adele Geradts. I met them doing the fantastic Armageddon Fan Expos. They were always so good to me and then on top of their generosity, they added the offer to stay with them in their beautiful historical home. We rested up with them, their 3 Maine Coon kitties and 2 loveable doggos. The house was so large they each had offices, and room for guests! Bill recommended Oramaru as a must-see town down along the coast. If Bill thinks it’s cool, we have to check it out!

So we headed for Oamaru, the Steampunk Town of New Zealand. Most famous for its blue penguin colony, steampunk, and limestone Victorian architecture, Ōamaru is the largest town in the Waitaki District. Captivating little blue penguins, fur seals and rare seabirds call Ōamaru home.

Our Airbnb was one of my favorite stays! A charming cottage on the grounds of a larger home, and owned by a friendly artist, it had a sea view!

We just HAD to see the tiny blue penguins return from a day of fishing in the sea. We had seen them swimming far from shore off the Abel Tasman National Park. We’d also seen them swimming off Kaikoura, but it was hard to really get a decent look at the swift little birds.

Oamaru had a famously successful colony of penguins, rigorously guarded by a sophisticated combination of protected nesting grounds, sea access, viewing platforms and visitor center. Each night a limited number of seats were available for guests to watch the penguins return from the sea and head to their nests and young. The tickets were gone on our first night so we purchased tickets for the next, and our last night!

We were told that warm clothes and even blankets were highly recommended. This was summertime in NZ! But you are near the bottom of the planet. We would be prepared.

The next day we explored the town, starting with Steampunk HQ! Opened in November 2011, it’s an art collaboration and gallery in the historic Victorian precinct of Oamaru. Steampunk is celebrated via an array of contraptions and sculptures, complemented by audiovisual installations designed by many artists and even local farmers got into it using their rusted out old tools. The yard around the building also contains a collection of other industrial parts and projects in various stages of completion.

Steampunk HQ is located in the historic Meeks Grain Elevator Building, and was helped along by Weta workshop contributions from its creations (films) and even some of the creators! We spent a couple of hours in the interactive space, turning things on and off, cranking up machines, crawling through weird rooms, and just having our minds blown. The creativity is off the charts.

The town has embraced the movement, even bringing films to shoot using the Victorian industrial street as a backdrop. Oamaru was a port town, with a huge pier and railroad system to on and off load ships. Evidently there was a plethora of old rusted out and massive equipment in and around the historic district. It was not developed but mostly just sat there. Fantastic old buildings, now being used for creativity and enjoyment.

My photos don’t do it justice.

We arrived early for the penguin viewing. Yes we dressed warm! Good thing too. Turns out the seating is concrete bleachers facing the sea, semi enclosed. Talking to an employee, we were recommended the ideal seats to be the highest up and center. Rather counterintuitive, but you could see all the way down to the edge of the rocks as they fell into the sea. How would the penguins navigate that? Soon, we saw exactly how as the little birds tumbled awkwardly in the crashing waves and hopped up the rocks. How they aren’t terribly bruised I have no idea. They came in small groups of 3 to maybe 12 at a time. They’d stop, shaking their coats and preen for a while, then one who seemed to be the lookout, would scan the grounds thoroughly for a long time, 20 minutes or so, and then lead its group higher up the rocks.

They’d stop again, repeating the process. Amongst the rocks were sleeping fur seals. I thought the penguins would be worried since seals did eat them. But it didn’t seem to be the seals they were worried about!

Actually, I am not sure what they were worried about! They saw us, but we didn’t phase them either. We had been warned to be very quiet, no photography was allowed, and no movement when they were close. People were very respectful. Maybe they were using the time to dry off. It got darker as the evening went on. There were red lights for us humans to be able to see a bit, and I guess that didn’t bother the penguin colony too much. Over the 3 hours we watched 200 penguins make their way from the sea and back to the nests. The guides counted each one to log every night. People left after a little while. Maybe it wasn’t exciting enough for them. Glenn and I were fascinated and thrilled for the privilege of watching these rare little penguins go about their lives.

By the time the guides gently suggested it was time to go, we’d been there about 3.5 hours and there were only about a dozen of us left from the 100 plus guests there for the evening. The last guide was talking to some guests and as we passed them I saw something move in the shrubs. We got closer and it was several penguin chicks chasing each other in the red light. Their parents were back and after being fed they had the zoomies! Unreal how cute it was.

Next: Continuing South!

Journal Prompt

(Each month I will give you a thought to fire up your mind. Use journaling prompts over and over again and see how the result changes.)

1. Start your day with this question: “What is the greatest ideal of myself that I can be today?”

“… Most people … get up in the morning, and the first thing they do is think about the problems in their life. And those problems are memories from the past, so the moment they think about their problems, they’re thinking about the past. Every one of those problems has an emotion attached to them, so they start feeling unhappy or unworthy or whatever … so, from the familiar past, they’re going to live in the predictable future, right?” – Dr. Joe Dispenza

How many times have you woken up in the morning and immediately reached for your phone? We spend a lot of time focusing on everything we need to get done, everything we think we can’t do, and everything that’s wrong in the world.

But that’s a really negative way of thinking, and it’s causing us to get sick.

Every morning for the next seven mornings, I want you to start with a positive thought. How can you be the best version of yourself today? Decide to be the happiest, most positive version of yourself that you can be, and you’ll start your day in a much better emotional state. And as we’ve already talked about, our physical state is directly connected to our emotional state, so being in a positive emotional mindset is good for our bodies too!

2. Practice gratitude at the end of each day.

According to Dr. Joe, there is no shortage of research on the positive effect of gratitude on our brains. He says that there are about twelve hundred different chemical reactions that help heal and restore your body that are triggered by gratitude!

“Practicing gratitude for your life and the good things in it on a daily basis has incredible effects on your physical health. So each night of the next week, spend a few minutes before bed giving thanks. You can do this in your mind or in a journal — it doesn’t matter how you practice gratitude, you just have to do it!” ~Lewis Howes

All photos in this MoMag from Oamaru, South Island, New Zealand

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Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon by Dr. Joe Dispenza https://amzn.to/44XBINt

Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Lack of Focus, Anger, and Memory Problems by Dr. Daniel Amen https://amzn.to/3IzWfQS ($9.62 on Sale)

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