How to Overcome Negative Thinking
It happens to everyone at some point or another, but when it becomes habitual, it is a self-defeating nuisance. Negative thinking can steal your energy, motivation, and dreams. It can impact your health giving you muscle pains and headaches. But as someone who has had to seriously work on overcoming negative thinking.
I have to say it can be done easily and quickly. I learned them mostly while raising my own children and was astonished how quickly each trick transformed thoughts, feelings and outcomes.
1. Change Your Scenery
If you can take a walk outside, pick through your garden or hike up to a coffee shop that is great. Don’t wear tracks in the ground or bang your head against a wall, but find something new to look out on and inspire new thinking. Changing your view will change your mind.
2. Pass Through a Doorway
If you can’t go outside, apparently just even passing through a doorway or an arch is helpful to stop negative thinking. It’s as if when we physically exit a place where the negative thinking was taking place, we get a que that we are leaving it behind.
It’s somehow related to the phenomenon where we get up to go get something or do something in the next room, but when we pass through a doorway. we realize we have no idea what we were just about to do. So give it a try. You may forget what you were being so negative about all together.
3. Spend Time With Nature
If you are getting weighed down day after day, don’t just go outside to change a negative thought, but go for a hike through some tall trees or through some grassy lawns, because just being out in nature heightens people’s spirits. It may be the source of the phrase “happy campers.” It is hard to feel weighed down under an expanse of blue sky or a star lit night sky.
4. Build Walls Between You and Negative Thinkers
Sometimes you just have to be negative to save yourself from negativity, so decline the lunch date at work with the people that want to hash everything out that was done wrong to them, ditch the invite to the wedding where the nicest thing people will say to you is at least you knew not to wear white, and start making it harder for the drama queens and sad sacks to reach you. Is your social media feed full of doom and gloom? Start unfollowing, unfriending, and blocking the offenders.
Make it harder for the negative to find you in until you are stronger and more in control of what you internalize. My warning is to be prepared for the realization that some bridges shall not be rebuilt, and that is ok.
5. Exercise
Stay Inspired Without Body Shaming
You have your billionth reason to exercise now, so go to it. You have got to get the blood pumping and get those endorphins racing however you want. Even a 15 minute bike ride is worth the benefits it gives you. Put on some music and dance. Pull some weeds, because that counts too. Whatever you can do to get yourself moving and flowing again will pay off with better, more positive thoughts.
6. Refresh Yourself
Overcome Mental Barriers to get Relaxed
Are your clothes uncomfortable? Are your feet hot? Is your face feeling oily? Spritz some water with lemon on yourself. Take a cool cloth and cool off with it. Get some looser clothes on. Feeling refreshed will naturally make positive thoughts come to life again. And to clear your head, strange enough, a good foot massage really does help. Give yourself a little love.
7. Treat Yourself
You have things that you love whether it is coffee, tea, chocolate, mints, or even a nice new pen. It doesn’t have to be big. Maybe it is a snow cone for just you. Or maybe you can have a cold beer in a frosty glass at lunch. Or a chilled glass of Riesling. Surely there is something in the whole big bad world that can make you smile.
8. Replace the Thoughts Out Loud
Once you have unclogged, unstuck, and refreshed yourself, say out loud what you want to replace your negative thoughts with. And don’t be shy addressing them directly, saying, “Negative thoughts, go away and don’t come back.” Say out loud, “I can do this.” Say out loud, “I am capable.” Say out loud, “Mistakes are lessons we can learn from.” Say out loud, “Tomorrow is a new day.” Say out loud, “I am worth it.” Say out loud, “I can do this.” You may even need to look in the mirror and say, “I love you. You are worth loving.”
Life is rough and challenging, and we can get tired and bogged down in the weeds, but we definitely don’t have to stay there. And positive thinking is like a muscle and like any other skill. It requires training and practice. I’m working on my children early and through them, I’ve transformed myself. (12+ Life Quotes And Sayings)
I had some very weight baggage from childhood to overcome. Overcoming negative thinking was easier and faster than I thought possible. I thought genetics and abuse were going to keep me tied down forever, but really and truly, you can muscle yourself out of seeing things negatively and finally overcome negative thinking. And you are totally worth it.
