The moment you eliminate negative thinking from your thought patterns, you shall have taken the most important step toward happiness, personal health and well-being. When you assume full control of your thoughts and emotions, disciplining them to remain directed towards positive thoughts, the quality of your inner and outer life will improve. Here are some of the ways to think positive and stop thinking negative:
Pay Attention to Your Negative and Positive Thoughts
Our thoughts are always with us, and no other person controls them for us. It is common for us to take for granted and pay little attention to our thoughts because of their constant presence. Perhaps, we should ask ourselves, “Are the thoughts I’m having influencing my actions and feelings in a negative way?” Unless we learn to be aware of our thoughts, we will not be able to change the negative thoughts to positive ones.
Minimize Your Negative Thoughts
The next step after being aware of negative thought patterns is to minimize them. You may employ thought interruption. Right after you realize that you are entertaining a negative thought, stop it. You may want to wear a rubber band on your wrist, and snap it when a negative thought comes to mind. This is to remind you to stop it. Try as much as possible to be objective about the situation. During times of conflict, an effective yardstick is to examine if your thoughts or actions are helping you attain your goal.
Increase Your Positive Thoughts
It is not automatic that you increase positive thoughts when you are able to minimize the negative ones. Here are some ways to help you increase your positive thoughts:
Combat Negative Self-Talk
If you remember a particular situation where you overreacted, it is beneficial to go over that situation once again and identify the negative self-talk. After you have identified it, come up with ways to dispute it.
Replace Negative Thoughts with Calming and Coping Ones
If you catch yourself thinking about a certain person in hostile terms, then stop and replace it with thoughts that highlight your ability to cope.
Think and Verbalize Self-Praise Thoughts
Whenever you have accomplished something, give yourself a pat on the back. Give yourself credit for the things you accomplish each and every day.
Use Humor
It’s not good to take yourself too seriously. Humor will abate anger and reduce depression. The ability to laugh at yourself is a gift, and it calms you down enough to ponder your situation more rationally.
These steps will help you stop the negative cycle of thoughts and emotions, and start thinking positively. If you don’t find and fix the negative cycle, it would only lead to even more negative emotions or thoughts. It is vital that you break the negative cycle and get back on the positive track as quickly as you can.
The Author:
Evelyn Lim is a life coach and an intuitive consultant, with a passion for helping her clients and readers raise their vibrational state of being to attract abundance. She is an author of self help topics such as positive thinking, attracting abundance, spirituality and becoming more happy. For free bonuses on manifesting secrets, mp3 downloads and fresh weekly tips, please sign up to her Abundance Tapestry newsletter. evelynlim.com