Five Practical Ways To Deal With Negative Thoughts
Thoughts are mental cognitions—our ideas, opinions, and beliefs about ourselves, others and the world around us. They include the perspectives we bring to any situation or experience that color our point of view. Thoughts are the stories that we tell ourselves daily: the lens with which we view the world. If our inner self talk is negative we are more likely to view the world as negative. To deal with negative thoughts we can employ the following practical life changing skills:
Practice mindfulness
Practicing mindfulness can help you become more conscious of your thoughts and build greater self-awareness. Majority of the thoughts are automatic and arise from the subconscious mind. They simply appear from that constant flow of mental chatter. Start by allowing yourself to be a spectator of your own thought patterns. This is done by detaching yourself from your thoughts and emotions and viewing them as an outside observer.
2. Keep a thought diary
Your thoughts will impact your feelings, behavior, and what happens to your body. Most of the problems you face are not so much as a result of the event itself but more a response to its interpretation. Thought diaries provide a practical and easy way to capture your negative thought processes. It records how you handle situations over time and the thinking patterns that form. As you track different events, situations and the emotions attached to the event, patterns become evident. Reflecting on the self-talk can facilitate finding those thoughts that are harmful and self-defeating. Without this sort of reflection, these damaging thoughts might go unnoticed and therefore, unattended. As you observe your thoughts, work on identifying and labeling cognitive errors and negativity.
3. Don’t accept every thought that comes to your mind
You cannot control the thoughts that go through you mind but you can choose which ones to dwell on. Just like you cannot stop birds from flying over your head but you stop them from building nests. Usually the thoughts that you focus on are those that catch your attention because they often come with a strong feeling attached to them. The problem is that these thoughts are sometimes not based on current logic but stem from your childhood traumas and other experiences. Thus, your thoughts may not necessarily be based on reality. When a thought comes to mind, recognize it, accept it, and investigate what it is about. Practice conscious application of reason or perception to the origin of our thoughts: analyzing and questioning them against reality. Then you will be able to take conscious control of the thought-stream.
A good example is when you have had a fight with your best friend, spouse or family member and you start telling yourself that “nobody likes me”. If you pose to challenge that thought you will realize that it is your mind playing tricks on you because you will find many people that love and care for you. You will realize that this is an isolated instance. So next time you tell yourself that, you are a looser, failure, stupid etc. think twice.
4. Replace negative thoughts with positive ones
You cannot “stop thinking”. You will also realize that the more you try to suppress or ignore a certain thought the more it wants to express itself causing turmoil in the mind. But once you become aware of your thought patterns, you can choose to replace the old way of thinking with positive ways. Thoughts repeated have a way of forming pathways in our brain. They become engrained and by default you retreat to them always. Sadly most of these thoughts are negative. To change this thinking pattern you will need to restructure the way you think. This is achieved by challenging the negative thinking patterns and exploring alternatives that are more helpful and realistic. Questions like, where is this thought coming from? Is it realistic? How will it help? What will you gain/ lose by continuing to believe that thought? Consider that the thought may be as a result of a thinking error such as viewing things as either black or white (maximization and minimization). After capturing unhelpful thoughts, it is essential to challenge and, where possible, replace them with something more worthwhile. By replacing those negative thoughts you can learn to behave and feel differently.
5. Practice self-compassion
Be more mindful of your self-talk. It’s easy to be tough on yourself—we tend to do it much, much more than we realize. You show yourself compassion by forgiving yourself, accepting your perceived flaws, and showing yourself kindness and love even when situations might be less than optimal. You start treating yourself as you would a best friend. After all you are the only one who knows what is good for you
The change is a process that will take time, but if you consciously apply these steps, you emerge a better you