Would you change your automatic negative thinking into a positive one?
Written by Rodolfo Parlati on 20/05/2022
Every day, the top of each of us is crowded with many thoughts. Sometimes, these are pleasant thoughts, other times helpful thoughts. Then, there are thoughts about your future and other times they’re harmful thoughts.
In particular, there are times when automatic negative thinking invades the mind. This happens even if you tend to have a positive approach to life. For instance, it’s the case of a series of events and unforeseen events that all concentrate together in the same period and put a strain on people’s strength and balance. However, in these moments, you need to pay more attention to your mind. Indeed, negative thoughts can quickly accumulate and become real boulders, which you keep up your shoulders every day, consuming precious energy and limiting your creativity and self-efficacy.
What are your thoughts?
Thoughts are essentially products of your mental activity. They’re a way of seeing and experiencing the world around you, but they’re not a faithful representation of it. This suggests that your thoughts can be wrong, that is, they will be excessively negative and represent only what is wrong, what you are doing not like the experiences you live, leading you to neglect, instead, everything that’s good.
All this comes from a primal instinct of human beings: survival. A primitive man must be able to recognise the danger of an approaching ferocious animal because his own life is at stake. This instinct leads us to offer more importance to dangers than things that are already good. Today, fortunately, people do not live perpetually exposed to this type of danger but our brain partially retains that primordial instinct and everyone should remember it when they think that everything goes wrong.
How to turn your automatic negative thinking into a positive one
The perpetuation of a negative attitude can lead to various types of effects, like reduced self-esteem, worsening interpersonal relationships, also as anxiety. So how does one replace a negative thought with a positive thought? Fortunately, turning a negative thought into a positive one is feasible, because of some effective strategies to implement. It’s a mental approach that trains you to stop believing negative thoughts, verify them, turn them into positive thoughts then take action. Let’s examine how:
Listen carefully to yourself
To rework your negative thoughts, the primary step is to listen to yourself. You ought to never interrupt your inner dialogue because this is precisely what signals to you how your thoughts are flowing into your mind. So, take a while to listen carefully to any thoughts you have, regardless of what kind they are. This may also stimulate your self-awareness.
Write your thoughts
If you’ve got a problem that constantly generates negative thoughts, you’ll deliberately decide to deal with it by taking a notebook or paper and writing down the feelings it arouses in you, what caused it and what you’ll do to improve the situation. This method allows you to clarify within yourself and it helps you to release some positive energy. A transparent mind can think better and with greater clarity.
Change your posture
Emotions are closely associated with your body. Continuous negative thoughts lead you to possess a submissive, constricted posture, together with your shoulders and head lowered or with a stiff torso or jaw. To reverse this trend, once you have a certain thought, try going for a walk to stretch your legs, spread your shoulders and chest wide, look up, feel your feet firmly on the bottom and breathe deeply. By changing your physical attitude you’ll also change your mental one.
Embrace negative thoughts
Identifying your negative thoughts may be a key step in transforming them into positive thoughts and actions. If you’ll identify them, you’ll manage them and choose what to do, instead of becoming their unwitting victim. Once this is often done, attempt to welcome them, as they present themselves, without feeling any judgment or fear. Negative thoughts shouldn’t be hidden or blocked at all. They’re part of you and your humanity. As soon as you intercept them, immediately give some thought to how to transform them. Becoming conscious of your thoughts and accepting the situation you are starting from is the first step to change.
Meditate
The positive effects of meditation on the human brain are well known for some time now. Even just 10 minutes each day are enough to get good results. To start, simply try that specialize in your breath for about 1 minute and whenever your mind wanders, bring it back to the breath. because the days go by, attempt to extend the time. This may help you benefit from greater calm and clarity.
Reframe negative thoughts
A very effective strategy for transforming negative thoughts is to reframe them. Indeed, it’s a question of transforming them from absolute concepts into relative. Put your thoughts under the hand glass and look for evidence to prove or contradict them. Reframing your thoughts adequately lightens their negative. In any case, it’s good to be careful not to get carried away by naive and unrealistic positivity.
Use positive affirmations
A useful way of transforming your automatic negative thinking into a positive one is that of positive affirmations. These are phrases that you simply can repeat in your mind when negative thoughts assail you. They’re essentially motivational phrases that belong to you and give you confidence. You’ll recite them at any time of the day and, in any case, whenever you are feeling the need for encouragement.
Conclusions
The moment you realize that negative thoughts and emotions are part of your human nature, you’ll immediately take all the necessary actions to impress in your mind even the positive things that happen to you in life.
One final tip is to practice gratitude. For instance, you would possibly keep a simple journal in which every night, before you attend sleep, write down a minimum of three positive things that have happened to you every day that you are grateful for. The straightforward fact of writing them gives these same events greater relevance because the human brain tends to remember what it writes better than what it only thinks.
Do you want to know more about how to change your automatic negative thinking?
Feel free to contact me and set a FREE discovery call.
