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Most of us experience negative thoughts on a daily basis. Even if it’s just a short negative remark by your mental faculty.
By negative thoughts, I mean every thought that is associated with negative emotions. Or to put it differently, negative thoughts are thoughts that you don’t like and hence label negative.
The question that arises is how to stop negative thoughts? And also, can we be free of negative thoughts?
I believe we can be free of negative thoughts. But for starters, it’s important to know how to deal with them when they arise.
There are many different opinions on what to do with negative thoughts. In this article, I want to share with you the way that has proven to be the best in my life.
Let Go of Resistance
There are people out there who claim that you have to counter a negative thought with a positive one. However, this creates unnecessary resistance which will just lead to more negative thinking.
Because essentially what you are doing is denying the negative thought. And if you deny it (=don’t accept it) you are giving it more power.
What you resist persists, what you look at disappears.
So the first thing to do when negative thoughts arise is to stop seeing them as an enemy you have to fight against.
Or to rephrase it, if you want to stop negative thoughts you have to first let go of wanting to stop them.
By internalizing this fact your inner life will become a lot more relaxed.
Also, trying to monitor every thought to then come up with a counterthought is exhausting and puts unnecessary pressure on yourself.
Negative Thoughts as Lessons from Love
Reframing your negative thoughts is the next step to improving your relationship with those thoughts.
Many people regard Love as the one source of everything. Hence, we can ask ourselves what loving purpose negative thoughts may serve.
A beneficial answer to this is that negative thoughts are hints from Love to help you on your developmental journey.
You can see it as the nudge of a big brother gently teasing you.
Negative thoughts are not the absolute truth about your reality. Rather they are the breadcrumbs showing you where you need to direct your healing awareness.
Which emotions need to be allowed and integrated. And which beliefs no longer serve you on your path to self-actualization.
If you start to see your negative thoughts as support instead of roadblocks they will take on a different light and will no longer seem threatening.
If you want to stop negative thoughts, first be aware of this:
Negative thoughts are only negative because we label them negative.
What if we would just call them thoughts?
Then we are free to discover their hidden purpose and possibly even their potential for self-development.
Feel Your Emotions
Because the average person has up to 6200 thoughts a day tracking and filing them as positive or negative would be a Herculean task.
A much more elegant and simple way to stop negative thoughts is feeling the associated emotions. This is especially powerful for repeating negative thought patterns.
Instead of keeping track of every thought, observe your emotions. How do you feel right now?
Negative emotions lead to negative thinking.
The feeling-tone theory suggests that thoughts are filed according to feelings (feeling tones). This means that one emotion can be associated with literally thousands of thoughts.
You can observe this in people who carry a lot of fear. That fear translates into anxious thoughts and hence the world is a fearful place for them. If you let go of the fear the anxious thoughts disappear and the world transforms.
So the good news is if you release the negative feeling you also release all the associated negative thoughts.
You can do this by allowing yourself the feel every emotion that comes up. You will then start to release the energy behind the emotion which will result in letting go.
Write New Beliefs
If you start the process of feeling your emotions you will most definitely start discovering the cause of your negative emotions.
And the cause for emotions is beliefs. Belief structures are what create our perception of reality. At any given moment there can be thousands of beliefs active, making sense of your experience.
Beliefs are often formed early in life through the influence of parents, elders, authorities, society, and experiences.
If you were, as a child, frequently told that you are wrong whenever you said something then you might grow up with the belief that your opinion doesn’t matter. As a result, you may experience inhibition to speaking and stating your opinion in front of others.
On the emotional plane, this can translate into anxiety and feelings of worthlessness.
So, whenever you uncover a limiting belief through the act of feeling your emotions ask yourself if this is really something you want to keep believing.
And then write down a new belief. You can also use this new belief as a positive affirmation to further anchor it in your subconscious.
When negative thoughts then arise all you have to do is to feel the emotion and be aware that this is the old belief trying to re-validate itself.
But you now know that by not resisting it you are further draining its power over your life.
Be aware that many beliefs were created to protect your ego. Hence because the ego knows the days of one of its protective shields is numbered it naturally tries to cling to it.
Cultivate Positive Thoughts and Emotions
Finally, when you have let go of a negative thought choose a positive empowering thought. And when you find yourself in a state of positive thoughts and emotions revel in it. Enjoy it, you deserve it!
As much as people resist negative thoughts and emotions we often resist positive thoughts and emotions as well. This is because we believe we don’t deserve to be happy.
Ask yourself if you’re blocking positive inner experiences.
Make a decision to let go of all blocks to happiness, joy, success, love, acceptance, and peace. Then see if you can release this block by allowing the associated feelings to be there.
Here again, I want to emphasize that cultivating positive thoughts is not about denying negative thoughts or reality. Rather it’s about recognizing the negative thoughts and choosing to not believe them.
Also, the more you cultivate positive thoughts the more positive thoughts you will have. On the flip side, the same is true for negative thoughts.
Negativity attracts negativity and positivity attracts positivity.
But it’s also true that denying the negative will give it more power. This means that positive thoughts should not be a way to fight negative thoughts.
Positive thoughts should affirm that you are the powerful creator of your life. And you are the only one responsible for your life.
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In the end, it all comes down to acceptance first. If you believe negative thoughts are something you have to fight, you will always fight.
So make them your friend or at least don’t take them too seriously. And then you will see how they lose their power over you.
Luka
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