5 Ways to Defeat The Stubborn Negative Thoughts in Your Mind
“Every thought
we think is creating our future.” Louise L. Hay
If your thoughts are focused on negativity, this quote is enough to
scare the wits out of you. But, that’s actually a good thing. When you’re
aware that negative thoughts are creating strangling weeds rather than blooming
roses in your future, you’ve taken the first step towards defeating them.
With a few, simple techniques, that nasty voice in your head will soon
learn to behave itself. None of us will ever entirely eradicate negative
thoughts — these are a natural and sometimes necessary reaction to external
influences. However, we can decide to put a leash on them. By doing this, we
turn them around and focus on the silver lining in everything.
1.
Investigate Your Thoughts
Think about those times when you’re driving to work on a well-worn route
and you realize, after you arrive, that you can’t even remember getting there.
When we’re in auto-pilot mode with our thoughts, we leave ourselves open to
invasions of negativity, as we do to car accidents if we don’t concentrate on
the road.
You can limit auto-pilot thinking by starting each day with the
intention of becoming aware of your thoughts. If, for example, you have a habit
of cringing when you look in the mirror and unleashing a torrent of
self-critical thoughts, use that as your first investigation of the day.
Ask yourself how those thoughts are helping you. This will lead to the
knowledge that they are, in fact, destroying your confidence. Why would you
want to do that to yourself, when you can just as easily think about your good
points? Once you’ve recognized the pattern, write an affirmation on the mirror,
such as: “I am beautiful inside and out.” Then, do it again.
You might feel silly at first, but the practice will act like a magic
eraser to banish negative thoughts.
2.
Flood Your Mind With Positivity
It doesn’t matter if you hate your job, don’t get along with your flat
mates, fight with your family or can’t lose weight to save yourself, you can
still put steps into place to flood your mind with “positivity”. A flood washes
away everything it makes contact with — in this case, your negative thoughts.
Start by introducing simple, yet effective activities into your life,
every single day, to enhance positive thinking. These can include reading
stimulating and inspiring books before you go to sleep, getting out into nature
every day, giving yourself the luxury of having a long, hot bath, seeking out
friends who support and encourage you, eating nourishing, delicious fresh food
and expressing your creativity.
3.
Focus On Creating
When we’re busy creating, our minds completely lose the ability to
worry. It doesn’t matter if you’re painting, playing an instrument, writing,
doing craft, cooking, building a shelf or gardening. Any or all creative
activities lead you towards inspiring thoughts.
Better yet, they act as a spring board towards the momentum you need to
lift you into positive thinking. Momentum, in this sense, means that you need
to have at least one positive thought in order to attract a spiral of them.
Next time you find yourself wallowing down the wrong end of the spiral, get
busy on a creative project of your choice and you’ll be on the up, before you know
it.
4.
Face Your Fears
Our negative thoughts are often a product of our fears and our fears
create negative thoughts. This can be a never-ending cycle of self-sabotaging
repetition, if we don’t commit to facing our fears and trying to overcome them.
Nothing compares to experiencing the death of a fear by running at it head on.
By doing so, we create space in our minds for new possibilities.
For example, if you have a fear of public speaking and it’s setting you
back in your career, start off small by practicing by yourself in the mirror.
Or, you could do a short course or gather a group of trusted friends to
critique you and build your confidence. If you’re scared of dogs because you
were bitten as a child, rather than subject your body to ‘fight or flight’ mode
every time you see one, spend time with a dog whose owner you trust, in order
to work through your pre-conditioned behaviour.
5.
Embrace Silence to Find Clarity
In the world we live in, our minds don’t actually get to switch off,
unless we make a concentrated effort to find the ‘off’ button. Where is the off
button? It’s located in silence. You don’t have to be in a hilltop monastery to
find peace, but you do have to turn the TV off, stop scrolling through the
Facebook feed and understand that silence doesn’t mean boredom.
With so many choices for distractions, we constantly escape awareness of
our thoughts by adding to them, with irritating (at best) and horrifying (at
worst) external influences that feed negative thinking for advertising and commercial
purposes. It’s important to empty all the rubbish that builds up in our minds,
by acknowledging negative thoughts, letting them go and replacing them with
positive ones.
The easiest way you can do this is to meditate. By calming
all thoughts in your mind, you’re effectively doing a spring clean. By allowing
space between your thoughts, you’re gaining clarity. By gaining clarity, you’re
strengthening your ability to choose positive thoughts.
When you do that, you will have
uncovered the key to health, harmony and happiness…simply by turning it in the
opposite direction.
BY NICOLE WEST
http://www.lifehack.org/320376/5-ways-defeat-the-stubborn-negative-thoughts-your-mind?mid=20151023&ref=mail&uid=687414&feq=daily
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