Negative Thoughts

Nothing Negative Can Come from Positive Self Talk

Let’s face it, nothing negative can come from positive self talk. Being kind to ourselves or extending a supportive friendship can only bring good things into our life. All too often I hear people say things like “I should have”, “it was probably my fault”, “I’m just not good at that”, “I need to try harder”. Would you tell a friend that they didn’t try hard enough when their new project didn’t work out? Or would you say “you’re right, you weren’t good enough”, when their marriage breaks down? “I’m not enough” is a negative mantra that can often loop in our our brain and keep playing.

Be your Own BFF

Being your own best friend means that you are just right exactly the way you are, flaws and all. Friends have that way of embracing our quirkiness and seeing through our false bravado in times of need. They give us positive messages about ourselves and make us feel good, happy and appreciated. Enjoy who you are and give yourself some quality time. If you can’t think of things off the top of your head that are great about you then try a little exercise. Ask yourself what you value in a friend? What are some qualities that your favourite people have? Write down the ones that could apply to you. Tell you that you’re funny, authentic and kind, and spend a bit of time hanging out with you. Learn to enjoy your own company and just be with yourself.

Clear space for the positive

Banish those negative thoughts as they no longer serve you. Even amongst the most dire of circumstances there can be found a positive moment. Choose to reach for the alternative to the negative because there is always another option. This idea may take a bit of practice but when that negative thought creeps in, stop, then think about what possible positive thought could be applied to the moment. You can choose to see a huge snowfall as terrible and catastrophic or you can slow down to enjoy the beauty of it, grab a tea and take a bit of extra time to get to work. Practice this step regularly and you will find there is less room in your life for the negative thoughts.

Talk to Yourself

Now this might seem a bit strange but I do it all the time. On more than one occasion I have found myself chattering away saying “you can do this” when faced with difficulty during my day. Tell yourself out loud that “you’ve got this” or “you’re a rockstar”. The more we hear these words the more our brains take them in and they become our truth. Whatever your mantra, practice this. You can talk to yourself in the shower or in the car on the way to work or wherever works for you. Say it loud and be proud about it because you are pretty awesome!

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Don’t Believe Everything You Think

Negative thoughts can impact our daily lives. They can be barriers to our success, they can stop us from trying something new and they can feed us false information.

A negative thought can start out small and seemingly harmless but the more our mind nurtures it the thought takes on a life of it’s own and multiplies becoming enormous!

You may feel you are fighting an uphill battle because yes the world is full of negativity as the media constantly likes to remind you. The world however is also filled with positivity and we get to choose what we would like to see more of in our life.

Is our thought real or based in fact……or Do we know this to be true? What evidence do we have to support it? Is there another explanation? What positive thought about this might counterbalance the negative one?

Tackle that negative thought early before it is joined by friends. Choose to implement strategies that embrace the positive over the negative.

On a site called Tiny Buddha an article by Michelle Uy, gives 10 Tips to Overcome Negative Thoughts: Positive Thinking Made Easy. She shares ideas about making a gratitude list or one of my personal favorites, remembering we are not perfect and not dwelling on our mistakes. We can be our worst critic even in adulthood, it is as though we go back to our childhood and that test that we wrote and that question we think we should have gotten right. What about choosing to celebrate the good things we have done and looking at the things we have learned along the way?!

The inner critic is explored in How Negative Thoughts are Ruining Your Life by Lisa Firestone Ph D, from Psychology Today. They support the idea of self reflection and mindful living to be important ingredients in finding happiness or more positivity in our lives.

If we dig a little more on the internet we find that there are sites dedicated to the positive. You can take the Positivity Self Test to find out what your positivity to negativity score is. You can check out a writer’s take on Benjamin Franklin’s daily journal. Ben started each day with a morning question, What good shall I do today? and ended the day with What good have I done today? Tim Goessling on the Good Men Project, shares with us how he matched up on I Lived A Day According to Ben Franklin’s Schedule and It Changed My Life.

If you are tech savvy and like to use apps there are of course apps to keep us on track in our journey to embrace happiness and positivity. Happify (free in iTunes) and Positive Thinking by TappCoder (Android and Apple) are just a couple I came across. If you are a reader then a great read is The Happiness Project and Happy at Home by author Gretchen Rubin. So be kind to yourself and make a choice, a choice to see more positive and to let happiness into your life.