You are not your thoughts, you are the watcher of your thoughts. This is a commonly put forth idea in meditation training. Learning to separate yourself from your thoughts can be especially important if you have a lot of negative thinking.
When you find yourself thinking negatively, there are several things you can do:
Take a mindful moment
Work on limiting beliefs
Say affirmations
Practice gratitude
Practice non-judgement
If you do any of these things, you can learn to separate yourself from persistent negative thoughts. Then, you can input positive thoughts in the form of affirmations and gratitude. This helps to rewire your brain for happiness, and reduces negative thinking.
It can be easy at times to get into a negative thinking spiral, and envision worst-case scenarios. I know that I do this at times, especially because I have anxiety and depression. But negative thoughts just amplify themselves.
It has to do with confirmation bias, when we are in a negative state, we attract more negative thoughts. The continuing negative thoughts keep us in a negative state. So, we need to do something to break our thought patterns.
Anything you can do to tell you that your negative thoughts aren’t true, and all the catastrophic things you are imagining won’t happen will help to break you out of a negative state.
Once you have returned to a calm, neutral state, then you can proceed to problem solve whatever issue caused you to start thinking negatively in the first place. It is incredibly hard to problem solve when you are feeling negative, you just want to give up and take the path of least resistance.
But, that isn’t going to help you in the long run. By breaking out of your negative thinking spiral using positive thinking, mindfulness and the other strategies listed above, you can reprogram your mind to feel more positive. Then, you will more easily be able to identify solutions to your problems, instead of feeling like they can’t be solved.
Anything can be solved with enough creative thinking, willpower and hard work.
You can change your life at any moment, no matter how bleak it feels. You just have to change yourself and your mindset first.
Be well my lovelies,
Nicole Dake