“Believing in negative thoughts is the single greatest obstruction to success.” – Charles F Glassman.
It’s believed that indulging in negative thinking and believing in negative thoughts is easier than indulging in positive thinking. Indeed it is true. Try doing this- at the end of your day just mentally go through all the events that took place in those 24 hours. I’m pretty sure you’ll be more likely to come up with negative thoughts about some stressful events rather than being grateful and thankful about the good events that took place. It’s a common human tendency to think and dwell into negative thoughts. But ask yourself, what purpose is it really solving? Thinking negative thoughts and dwelling on negativity only gives rise to more and more level of stress and anxiety. Nothing really beneficial comes out of it.
Therefore, I’m going to share some ways on how you can tackle your negative thoughts.
- To get rid of negative thoughts first you need to start working on yourself, your thought processes and your mental setup towards problems. At the end of each day, give yourself 15-30 minutes. Just go through how your day went, did any significant event happen, how did that make you feel, etc. It’s very important to be in touch with your emotions and your thoughts. Knowing your negative thoughts will help you in handling them better.
- Yoga and/or Meditation.
The whole idea of yoga and meditation is to help us concentrate and focus better. Not only this, yoga and meditation helps in relaxing the mind and the body. It brings down our focus to that particular moment. It brings the focus of the wandering mind to the ‘here and now’ instead of a million thoughts that run through our minds. - Check your social circle.
We live in such a complex world. We hardly have time for our loved ones, let alone having sometime to ourselves. Therefore, it becomes very important that you surround yourself with positive people. Your social circle has a major impact on how you think and act. Being with people who ooze positivity will help bring down your anxiety and negativity. - Become solution focused instead of being problem focussed.
What we think, we become. It’s very important to be optimistic in the face of adversities instead of playing the victim and giving up. Next time you catch yourself dwelling on negative thoughts, try this- think of the worst case scenario. Literally the worst possible thing that could happen pertaining to that situation. Now look for ways to tackle it. You’ll be in a better position to come up with solutions rather than thinking about the problem. - Take charge of your life.
We have a tendency of playing the ‘victim’. Whenever something stressful happens, with which we cannot cope, we often come up with excuses. This is not the correct attitude to deal with problems. Take responsibility to whatever happens in your life. No matter how complicated a situation seems to be, there is always a way out. You always have a choice to either give up or to fight back and being caught up in your negative thoughts will make it harder for you to make the correct choice. - Slow down.
Life is unpredictable. You will find yourself in situations that may seem inescapable, from time to time. In such times, just slow down. Give yourself a time out. Time out doesn’t mean that you’ll either run away or avoid the problem, no. Make a plan. Gather your resources and THINK how you can SOLVE the problem at hand. - Be useful for others.
Helping someone in need and being of use for someone else can really elevate your mood. Take the attention off of yourself for a while and help the other person. It fills you with happiness and that in turn helps you by giving you time to deal and cope with your negative thoughts better. - Seek help.
Sometimes you might find yourself completely helpless and in dire need of help. I personally know some people who would rather suffer by their negative and stressful thoughts than to ask for help or seek guidance. This is absolutely wrong. From time to time we all need help. Even psychologists need counseling sometimes! It’s completely alright to seek another person’s perspective on the issue at hand. You never know, you might come across some ideas that you couldn’t think of earlier. - Do things that make you happy.
Take some time off from your hectic life schedule and indulge in things that make you happy or things that you wanted to do but couldn’t earlier. A happy mind results in happy thoughts. Go for walks, meet new people, spend quality time with your loved ones and yourself and most importantly, breathe.Negative thoughts are one thing that we can’t get rid of. At least not easily. New experiences in life might bring both the good and the bad in life. The trick is to be optimistic. Don’t focus on ‘what can be’, focus on ‘what is’.
