10 Ways to Stop Negative Thinking and Negative Thoughts

Would you consider yourself a negative thinker? You know, be honest with yourself. Are you the glass is half empty type? Is your head full of negative thoughts?

Do you take a small event and over generalize it? For example you’re a single guy and you ask someone out on a date. You get turned down and your immediate assumption is “No one will ever go out with me.” Or “I’ll never find a girl to marry me and have a family.” My poor parents. They’ll never have grandchildren from their loser son.” Negative thoughts like this are damaging self-talk.

The person with a positive bent towards life in a similar situation may think, “She didn’t want to go out with me. Oh well there are plenty of great girls out there that would love to date me.” Or “I’d rather know now that she has no interest in me instead of buying her an expensive dinner and finding out afterward.”

You see there is more than one way of looking at the same situation. Ask yourself now, what kind of a conclusion would you come to?Are you a negative thinker?

Some negative thinkers can turn even the best of things around and find a reason to be unhappy. Say, you win the lottery and think “Damn those taxes are going to kill me, I may as well have not won at all so I could stay in my lower tax bracket.” You get offered a free trip to a gorgeous vacation destination. “I don’t have the right clothes, my luggage is old and ugly and I know I’ll never get time off from work.” These may seem over the top, but be honest with yourself. Are you doing that in any way? Are you looking at what others may perceive of as good, yet finding the negative in it? Finding a reason to be unhappy?

There are automatic thoughts that happen immediately between the perceived event and your conclusion that you’re probably not even aware of. Are you stuck in the negative thoughts rut? We can get into a sort of a groove and find it difficult to jump out of it and carve a new mental path. Think of a truck going over the same dirt road day after day after day. It creates an actual groove and to get the vehicle out of the groove takes some skillful driving. Well it’s much like that. It can be done, but it takes awareness and perseverance.

Negative thoughts versus positive thinking

Life is no more than a point of view. A pessimist can look at the same thing an optimist looks at and find gloom and doom where the optimist sees opportunity and light at the end of the tunnel. One makes themselves miserable, the other is full of hope and has fun on the journey.

Which would you rather be? Believe it or not, regardless of how you have been thinking in the past, it’s really your choice but it takes some honest self reflection and some conscious redirecting of your thoughts. Those negative thoughts do not have to be with you for the rest of your life or even one more day for that matter.

Visualization is a powerful tool for manifestation and it can work for your good or your not so good. Read more about visualization here Are you visualizing the worst case scenario? Do you spend hours over thinking the same situation and looking at it from every negative angle? As well as visualization works in bringing what you want into your life it works equally as well bringing in what you don’t want if that’s what you are seeing in your minds eye.

Remember your thoughts are creative, so get proactive and urge yourself to do the following.

Ways to stop negative thinking and banish negative thoughts

1. First observe your words, thoughts and self talk - to understand this, see the Inner Observer

2. Have some favorite positive quotes towards which to redirect your negative thoughts.

3. Get your family or friends to help remind you when you’re spouting gloom and doom.

4. Redirect your attention towards nature. Look out the window at the sky, the trees or if you’re lucky a bird.

5. Practice in advance a “happy place visualization” that you can draw on when negative thinking begins to take you over.

6. Think of 5 positive things about your day or even your week and mentally expand on them.

7. Play some soothing or upbeat music.

8. Take a walk, do yoga or take some deep diaphragmatic breaths.

9. See a Life Coach or even a Psycho Therapist. Sometimes even a few sessions can change your life.

10. Force a smile, even holding a pencil between your teeth forcing your lips to curl up at the corners causes happiness chemicals to be released from your brain.

It may feel some days like you have an evil alien in your brain trying to drive you insane. It turns out that it’s just your brain doing its job. The negative thoughts are there for a reason, and you can do something about them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-wortmann/stop-negative-thoughts_b_3202356.html

Watch this short video to enhance your new positive thoughts.
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