Negative thinking is sometimes an easy trap to fall into because we all at some point in our life go through hardship. However these struggles are not what causes your depressed/anxious feelings. In fact, it is your way of thinking about them that causes your anxiousness and depressed feelings. How you respond to your struggles and hardships determines the outcome of them. Sometimes your brain seems hard-wired that way and you fall into that pattern. This may, or may not be your fault. In order to stop this way of thinking you need to be aware of how to change it consciously.
Negative thinking is a habit
Sometimes our way of thinking can be distorted in some way and that will increase depression and make it harder to reach a positive overcome. Take a look at how you think and how you have thought in the past and you may realise that there is a pattern that you fall into every time. A habit you repeat again and again.
Keep the good and don’t focus on the negative thinking patterns
Don’t only focus on the negatives in your life. Everyone does have negatives but if you focus on the negative your life will seem depressing. It’s important not to filter out all the good things and also the neutral things as without these your life will seem listless and dull.
Focus on the facts – negative thinking is not the facts
You may find that you are focusing more on the way you feel and because you feel sad this is pulling you down. Instead try focusing on the facts and try to leave the emotion out of it. Analyse if your feelings are right for those facts or are you colouring how you feel those facts in some way? This be because of prior feelings and in this way you build bad feelings on bad feelings and sometimes none of these are really the way the facts present themselves.
Take on only one problem at a time
You may start with one problem but then find others start to creep into your thoughts as well. You will most likely then start to feel completely overwhelmed. If you take on the problems of your family as your own, you can also cause yourself to become overwhelmed. Try focusing on yourself and your problems before others. Look at how you can lighten your own load. When you are in a good head space you are more easily able to help those around you that you love.
The middle path is sometimes the best
Try not to think only in extremes. Not everything is black or white. Thinking in this type of absolutes causes you to forget that commonly things will fall in the middle. There are definitely shades of grey when it comes to most things in our lives.
Jumping to conclusions is out
You need to look at the facts and have adequate supporting evidence before you make any conclusion. Try not to predict a negative outcome just because you are feeling down. Not everything will end badly. There is normally more than one solution or outcome for most things that have gone wrong.
Watch your reaction to others
You are not a mind reader. Therefore, you won’t know what other people are thinking or feeling. Try not to react to your own belief that others are thinking and feeling badly about you as that may not be true. Make sure you have solid evidence before you react in a bad way to someone else.
Negativity will affect your future so stop it
We usually cannot predict the future but if you constantly are thinking negatively then things may turn out badly. When you are convinced that there will be a bad outcome, it may manifest to be true. Also, if you imagine the worst or make things a bigger deal than they are it will increase your fears and makes it harder to deal with the issue.
What can you do to stop your negative thinking?
We make rules for ourselves and others about a lot of things in life. You become angry or upset when these rules are not followed. Our thoughts go unnoticed as we automatically go through our day. This leads to the belief that an event causes a feeling or behaviour. Often though it is how we think about the event that causes the bad feelings and behaviours. The first step to change this is to notice these thoughts when they happen. Try to slow down your thinking, pay attention to those negative thoughts. Try not to judge them, just observe them.
Once you find you can do this try and change them. Collect the negative thoughts until you’re ready to deal with them. Acknowledge them for what they are and tell yourself you are ready to move past them. Ask yourself if these thoughts are really helpful to you. You most likely will find they are not. If they are not work on replacing them with more realistic and helpful thoughts. This will not be easy and a good tool to use when doing this is journaling. Writing them down in a journal will help you focus more on them just one at a time. Then instead of looking at them as negative try to become aware of how you can put a positive sway on the way you think. The key is to break the negative cycle, with positive thoughts.
Rejection never feels good – don’t go there
Most people struggle with being rejected. Unfortunately rejection is a part of our life sometimes. When we are rejected, whether it be from an employer, a partner or something else, we tend feel less than in some way. Like we have lost something. Instead of letting this feeling feed your negative thoughts consider the thought that you really have no idea why they said no to you. Since you have no idea there could be a million reasons you will never be aware of so why should you take that so personally that in some way they don’t like you or you are not good enough? Maybe it was the wrong timing, maybe they are having their own issues.
Whatever it is, you cannot change it. Instead, maybe you can learn from it and wait for the right opportunity. Think of it as if something better and more worthwhile will come along or happen and that other thing was not meant for you on your path anyway. The way you think about it will then bring a positive sway into your life.
What to do about it
So the next time something happens in your life that you could have in the past thought negatively about, take a breather, slow down and try to find all the positives associated with it. What can you possibly manifest in a positive way to make something good come of this? If you practice this in your lifestyle you will find more and more you will become very good at not only looking at the glass half full so to speak and good things happening but the glass overflowing with abundance and gratefulness for all the good things you really do have. This in sum will make you a much happier and positive person for your whole life. For more tips on how to adopt an attitude of gratitude check out my article on https://www.wellbeing.com.au/mind-spirit/gratitude-benefits-appreciation-little-things-life.html
Soon you will find your life will do a complete turnaround.
