How to Rule your MINDSET
Negative thoughts can easily spiral and lead to anxiety and sickness. With negative thinking we become our own worst enemy….
Do you experience negative thoughts such as: “I know I shouldn’t, but I really do hate it when Monday arrives”, “The kids are driving me crazy”, “Things will never get better with my partner”, “Why even try? It’s hopeless”, or “I can’t cope with the stress and drama”?
Negative thoughts often pop into our heads automatically, uninvited.
We all have negative thoughts, and they’re not necessarily a problem in themselves. But they become a problem when we believe them. They can escalate, and lead to anxiety and sickness.
The good news is that you can learn how to stop negative thoughts in their tracks – and replace them with more helpful, positive ones.
Why do negative thoughts come to mind?
According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts.
If we repeat those negative thoughts, we think negative way more than we think positive thoughts.
So if you have negative thoughts, you’re perfectly normal. Everyone experiences negative thoughts - about themselves, other people, the future or just the world in general. They’re often habitual and automatic, and we’re unaware that they’re even happening – which can make them hard to spot.
All negative thoughts are not bad. Being alert can help you survive, but most negative thoughts are useless. They only create imaginary drama in your mind and life.
How we feel also influences the way we think. When we’re down, hurting or sick, we tend to think more negatively. And when we’re anxious or scared, we tend to worry about the worst happening.
Spiraling negative thoughts can be a result of overthinking. This tends to happen when we have few distractions – which is why lying awake at night churning things over in our mind is a familiar feeling for many.
At the time, negative thoughts may seem completely rational and logical. So we believe them to be true. However, just because we have a thought doesn’t mean it’s true. That’s why it’s so important to question negative thoughts – to see whether they’re based on facts and reality, or not.
Negative thoughts can easily escalate. What starts out as one negative thought can snowball. Negative thoughts feed negative feelings – which reinforce our belief that the negative thought is true, and leads to more negative thinking.
As we’ve discussed before, if you have a broken mindset you can’t even begin your health journey! Today, I’d like to share how to spot negative thoughts, stop them – and change them to more positive ones.
Before I share with you my powerful time-tested Mindset tools, make sure that you have read last week’s newsletter on ”Top Breakthroughs in Aging Research”, you can access it, Here.
And don’t forget, tomorrow is the last day to take advantage of my special sauna discounting for my regular newsletter readers (see details at the end of this newsletter)…
OK, let’s dive into the the most important and essential part of your healing journey, MINDSET and how to rule it!
How to break out of Negative Thinking
In order to break out of negative thinking, the first step is to recognise your negative thoughts. Since they’re often automatic, this can be tricky. Watch out for the following unhelpful thinking styles, or ‘thinking traps’:
Catastrophising. What’s the worst that could happen? Do you find yourself jumping to the worst case scenario? When we catastrophise, we predict a negative outcome without seeing the whole picture. These negative thoughts are often “what ifs”. For example, do you think “She’s late coming home from work – what if she’s had a terrible accident”?
Magnification/minimisation. Do you always focus on the negative and play down the positive? For example, do you give a presentation at work and get great feedback – yet only focus on the one, small slip-up you made, that no one else even noticed?
Black-and-white thinking. Do you ever think “I’m a complete failure” and then “But he’s perfect”? Black-and-white thinking, also known as all-or-nothing thinking, results in oversimplifying things in this way – rather than seeing things in shades of grey.
Shoulds and musts. Do you set unreasonable expectations on yourself or others? For example, do you ever think “I need to do this perfectly, or else” or “I must be the best at what I do”? This thinking style can lead to a lot of stress, anxiety and disappointment.
Emotional reasoning. Is your thinking based on how you’re feeling rather than on the objective facts of a situation? For example, do you think “I feel anxious, so I must be doing something wrong?”
To help you spot these negative thoughts – and any patterns in your thinking style – it can be helpful to keep a ‘thought record’: a written, structured diary of your negative thoughts. For example, this might help you notice that you’re always anticipating the worst outcome.
This is a tool Jay Shetty, author of Think Like a Monk, used to recognize his negative thoughts. Actually, it’s one of the first exercises every monk begins with when entering the “monk-hood”.
Since we’re not training to become monks, we have access to pen and paper, plus our computers or cell phones.
Let’s break this pattern. Do an exercise with me.
STEP 1 -
Take out a piece of paper or open a writing software on your computer or mobile.
STEP 2 -
List every negative thought you have. Once you’ve listed everything down, don’t stop. Dig deeper and write more thoughts about:
Your fears
Your insecurities
Your losses
Things that stress you out regularly
Things that irritate you about other people
STEP 3 -
Make another column or a separate list.
Now, for every negative thought, write at least one positive thought.
If you fear failure, write one instance when failure helped you to learn a lesson.
If you’re insecure about your skills, write how much you’ve improved since you started.
If you’ve lost a relationship in the past, write about the beautiful time you spent with each other.
If you stress about work, write how your work is serving other people.
If you experience road rage, write about how often your commute was safe and got you to where you needed.
If you don’t like your coworker’s behavior, write about one positive thing about that person.
Shifting perspective sounds easy. But it’s not.
It takes practice.
This is why I want you to do this exercise right now. Once you do this exercise, your mind will remember it.
It will become part of your thinking process. Whenever you think of a negative thought, counter it with a positive one.
Once you recognise negative thoughts, you can manage them better. You can challenge them – and replace them with healthier, more positive ones.
If you are interested in learning more mind-centering tools, I suggest starting with Jay Shetty’s book, “Think Like a Monk”. It’s an easy read with lots of great information and helpful practices.
How to Challenge your Thinking
To change your negative thoughts to positive ones, first you need to challenge them. You can also remind yourself that they’re just thoughts – not facts. You’re going to have negative thoughts anyway – everyone does – but you can just observe and acknowledge them and let them pass overhead, like a cloud. This simple act of observation can change your relationship to them, and how you feel.
A more structured way to deal with negative thoughts is to examine the credible evidence for and against them. For example, what’s the evidence that you’re terrible at giving presentations? Perhaps there was one occasion when you forgot what you were going to say; but many more occasions where you had great feedback and even applause.
Other questions that can help us challenge our negative thoughts include: “Could there be another explanation?”, “What would other people say?” or “Am I jumping to conclusions?” Another approach is to imagine you’re making a judgement about the thought of a friend, rather than one of your own thoughts. Does it still seem reasonable?
Next, replace the negative thought with a more positive one. Some examples might include changing:
“He’s an hour late home from work – what if he’s had a serious car accident?” (catastrophising) to “He’s probably stuck in traffic”.
“I’m so nervous about speaking in front of people – I’m sure they’re thinking about how terrible I was last time” (magnification/minimisation) to “I’m probably better at speaking than I think. Last time I gave a presentation I had good feedback.”
“I’m a complete failure” (black-and-white thinking) to “I have strengths and weaknesses, like anyone – and many skills and abilities”.
“I feel guilty, so I must be a terrible person” (emotional reasoning) to “Everyone makes mistakes, it doesn’t make me a bad person.”
It’s easy to think the worst. But things will probably be OK.
With practice, you’ll learn to recognise and challenge your unhelpful negative thoughts – and replace them with more helpful positive ones. Although you’re bound to have negative thoughts, they don’t have to control you, or how you feel. You’re in control of how you react to them – and you can change them. And when you change your thoughts, you change your reality, and your health!
THE BOTTOM LINE
“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.” — Mahatma Gandhi
Whenever you think of a negative thought, counter it with a positive one.
Make it a habit. Give yourself the one day challenge I outlined to balance your thoughts.
The aim is to make this habit part of your subconscious. Once it has become part of your thinking process, you will shift your perspective, and improve your health.
Your thoughts are the roots of your destiny. Your next action results from your next thought. You owe it to yourself to improve the quality of your thoughts.
“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny AND your HEALTH.”
Take action.
Do the exercise and give yourself a one day challenge to get started.
It takes a cue, routine and a reward to form a habit. The cue is an automatic negative thought, the routine is a positive thought to balance it out, and the reward is how you feel.
Repeat until it becomes part of your thought process.
We are bring tools such as these to you, our patients, by using proven cutting-edge therapies to extend the health-span, life-span and years of health for everyone!
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