Negative thoughts! Do you wake up sometimes and feel constant negative thoughts rushing into your head? Or perhaps you were having a bad day and then negative thoughts start to reappear? Whether that was an obvious trigger, or they just came out of nowhere. Well, you are not alone, every single human being on the planet has negative thoughts.
Today, I am going to explain why you might be having negative thoughts and then how we manage them. Yes, manage negative thoughts…. Not get rid of them completely!
Unfortunately, nobody on this planet can get rid of all negative thoughts. Those people that you perceive as really happy all the time? Well, they may be happy a lot of the time but not all of the time. It’s just that people who seem happier and more positive, are able to deal with negative thoughts effectively. I will describe this today.
What causes negative thoughts?
Why do I always think negatively? We have a brain that is looking out for dangers. It is trying to keep you alive, not to keep you happy. In a way it doesn’t know the difference between a lion jumping out to attack you and the thought that someone may say something bad about you. The brain is a problem finder; it is always looking for problems. It is therefore your responsibility to find good questions for it to consider in order to feel positive.
Tips from a morning routine to make you feel good
From my experience and from intensive research, I would say that having a good morning routine is key. It establishes the way in which you will proceed with the day. My morning routine is pretty long but worth it and more often than not, it makes me feel fantastic. People might use excuses like ‘I’m more of a night owl’ or ‘I don’t have time’ but these are excuses made up because people tend to avoid doing things, they find uncomfortable. Making time for a good morning routine may, at first, be challenging, but if you apply it consistently, it will make you feel so much better, giving you more positive thoughts, thereby pushing out the negative ones.
So, here are a few things to include in the morning routine…
● Have a cold shower – many benefits from this, but one is reduction of cortisol, a stress hormone that can cause negativity.
● Meditation – helps you focus on breathing and calming you down, ready for what the day may throw at you
● Learning – when we learn we grow. How does it feel to learn something new and feel better from it? Make learning a daily activity instead of consuming endless rubbish on social media, your phone or the news.
There are many more ideas and you can experiment with these but try to implement some of them. Start small and build up.
Tips for setbacks
Unfortunately and inevitably in life, challenges will be thrown at you; we can’t do much about that. What we can do though, is look at how we respond to challenges. It’s good to start the day working on positivity, so that you are less likely to have negative thoughts throughout the day. When negative thoughts do arise, here are my top tips for dealing with them:
● 10 deep breaths – when we change our breathing, we can change our thinking. So calmly breath in and out. There are plenty of resources on breathing techniques on YouTube and Google.
● Journal it out – ask yourself empowering questions. You can shift the state of your mind by simply asking yourself a more positively worded question, such as ‘how do I improve this?’
● Go for a walk with no phone or just do nothing for 5 minutes – this allows the mind space to breathe and to digest the problem.
Summary
So, negative thoughts can never completely go away, but you have more power over them than you might think. It’s just a case of flushing lots more positivity into the brain so that it is more equipped to deal with the challenges that may arise.
When you do have a negative thought or encounter a challenge, don’t worry as this is normal. Just observe it, take some deep breaths, journal through it and allow the mind to digest it.
Easier said than done?… well, yes but like anything in life, it takes time and effort but worth it to help you feel good about yourself, surely ?
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Jonny Pardoe © May 2020
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