It's not surprising then that many of them may be negative thoughts that pop up out of the blue without us even wondering why or where they came from. If not for her compassionate and empathic response that day to my self-doubts and Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs), my career might have taken a different trajectory.īefore introducing the concept and scary realities of ANTs, let's meet Anne and John!ĭid you know the average person has about 48.6 thoughts per minute, according to the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at the University of Southern California? That adds up to 70,000 thoughts per day. Those were the very words I blabbered into the phone to Martina, my bookkeeper, minutes before we met for lunch on a fall day in 2013 (and the opening lines to the Prologue in our book).) Thankfully, without hesitation, she said, 'Lisa, you can do this, and you will.

'I can't do it! I mean, the hubris of thinking I could set up a global program on my own-it's too much, too ambitious…'