Negative Thinking

From The Series: 10 Things You Need To Quit Now

Most people believe that their thoughts originate from the vast unknown. They believe that they have no control over them, and that they are victims of the affect negative thinking has on their everyday life.

So, where do our thoughts (negative and positive) come from? Some theorists believe that they originate from outside of our brains. These theorists believe that the thoughts are from our environments and our senses (sights, smells, etc.). I would suggest another way to look at thoughts as if there were a radio station that plays thoughts, and is broadcasting all the time. If you can picture these broadcasts over your head and looking like a horizontal version of the matrix, you can then pick and choose which thoughts you want to think. Just because we have a notion, or hear a thought broadcast, doesn’t mean we have to bring the thought closer to us and then experience it. Just like the radio broadcast, if we don’t like the station, we change it.

Willie Has It Right!

If you are ready to try controlling what you think, then here we go…

Old Way

• A negative thought appears

• You begin to embrace it by continuing to let it be the subject of your thoughts

• You start having negative emotions connected with this thought

• There goes your day

New Way

•  A negative thought appears

• You begin to embrace it by continuing to let it be the subject of your thoughts

• —Change The Station— Call a friend, focus on a recent success, your family and friends, memories, etc.

It’s tough, but you will get better at it if you work hard at it.

 

The Traffic Cop

Install into your brain, the Traffic Cop.

Okay, you can’t really install anything into your brain, but you can insert this little guy into your awareness. The Traffic Cop is your negative thought filter. He stands between the barrage of thoughts that come into our heads, and the internal processing of our minds. It is when these negative thoughts are accepted into our minds that they can ruin our day (or worse). This little guy routes the thoughts that are negative into the bit bucket, and brings into our minds only the positive thoughts.

You have to pause for a second to allow this Traffic Cop the time to do his filtering. This method of taking control of your thinking patterns is not easy, but the work you put toward it is well worth it. Pausing gives us an opportunity to inspect the thought, and reject it by mentally saying “I’m not going to go there !”

We don’t have to accept our thoughts as an unrelenting attack from within we can, with practice, control how much time we are going to allow negative things to impact our life.

Reject and Replace

Rejecting a thought is difficult, but it can be done with practice. Once you reject a thought, you need to replace it with another thought quickly. By rejecting the negative thought you leave a temporary void behind that will get filled by either the same negative thought, or a new one. In either case, we don’t want that to happen. By replacing the negative thought with a totally unrelated positive thought or action, we take control of our thinking.

As described above, you need to change the channel. Changing the channel is simply setting your focus on something else that is either positive or unrelated to the negative thought. By calling a friend, surfing the net, playing with your pet (which can be a wonderful anxiety and stress reducer), or doing something physical you then take control of your thinking and thus successfully reject the negative thought.