How to Control Your Negative Thinking

Whatever you think of repeatedly will become a belief and life reflects the beliefs you have.

So if you believe something negative about yourself, about the people around you, about your life, you’re more likely to perceive and experience negative events reflecting those beliefs.

Whatever you believe and focus on, you will see more of it in your external reality.

When you have negative thoughts, they turn into beliefs. Negative beliefs.

Negative beliefs will lead to you doing things you don’t value or not doing the things you value.

The less action you take or the more action you take on the wrong things, the worse your outcome.

And the worse outcomes you have, the worse your overall quality of life.

So if you wanted something different — a more positive and better quality of life, it begins by taking control of your negative thoughts and beliefs.

Why Most People Fail to Control Their Thoughts

The main reason why people fail to control their thoughts is because they are TRYING to control their thoughts.

Stick with me here.

Have you noticed that whatever you try to control and force rarely goes how you want it to?

You try to control and force but nothing changes. If anything it goes worse than you could have expected.

The more you try to control, the more out of control you feel. Anything you try to control creates resistance.

And what you resist, persists.

This is the same with the mind and your thoughts.

Whatever you focus on, you will get more of even if it is something you don’t want.

For example, you might say “I don’t want to be broke”, but you stay broke. This is because you are focused on the state of being broke instead of focusing on making more money.

The mind doesn’t ‘understand’ that you are avoiding something (being broke). It just understands that being broke is the focal point.

Whatever you focus on, you will get more of it.

So the mind moves you towards your focal point though it is something you are avoiding and gives you more thoughts that align with it.

Why does this happen?

Target Fixation

Target fixation is an attentional phenomenon in which individuals focus on an object that they want to avoid. However, in focusing on avoiding the object, they unconsciously increase their chances of going towards it.

Commonly observed in fighter pilots who focused on avoiding a certain landmark but in focusing on it, flew into it.

The same is observed in car and motorcycle drivers.

Their focus was on avoiding other motorists and objects, instead of staying in their lanes. In focusing on avoiding the other motorists, they had more instances where they almost or did collide with others.

This is the same thing with your thoughts and attempting to control your thoughts.

The mind focuses on the content of a thought (“I am broke”) not on the context (“I want to avoid being broke”).

Focused on the content, your mind unconsciously looks for evidence of why you are broke. And because you see and think of all the reasons why you are broke, you stay broke.

You have resistance to being broke, but remember what you resist, persists.

Your energy and focus are directed to being broke so you ‘attract’ more evidence and circumstances of being broke, not of making more money.

How To Change Your Negative Thoughts

What you focus on, your mind will move you towards and you will get more of it. Good or bad.

If you are focused on one small detail, you lose out on the full picture.

You can’t change something if it is what you are focused on. You can’t change your negative thoughts if you are focused on the negative thoughts.

All you will see is more negativity and evidence of why they are true.

You need to step back and broaden your perspective instead of staying focused on where you are.

If you are stuck at the level of your negative thoughts, you won’t be able to change them. If you identify with your thoughts, you can’t change them because you are so attached to them.

You believe they are YOU.

However, if you can step back and expand, you can create separation between your experience of the thought and the thought itself.

What you resist, persists. What you accept, you can let go.

So you need to begin a process of disidentifying and detaching yourself from the thoughts.

By detaching from your thoughts, you create a space where you can accept them, let go and choose a new thought, a more positive thought.

Detaching doesn’t mean not caring, it means that you can see events, people and thoughts objectively for what they are: an event, a person, or a thought.

You look at them without giving them a meaning of good or bad and letting them affect how you think or feel.

You are indifferent to them.

By stepping back, you can gain a bigger perspective that allows you to see more. You will identify less and less with the negative thoughts and let them go.

Slowly you can introduce and focus on the positive thoughts.

With your focus on the positive thoughts, the negative thoughts will subside because what you focus on you get more of.

So how do you create the space to detach and disidentify?

Meditation is a great and powerful tool.

Through meditation, you practice awareness. It is a state where you are above your thoughts and feelings. You watch them without being attached to them.

You are not your thoughts, you are just the person experiencing the thoughts. You can observe the thoughts and decide how well they serve you.

If they don’t, you can then choose a different, more positive thought.

Action Step

• Start a meditation practice where you allow your thoughts and feelings to arise. Let them rise and observe them without responding to them.

• Simply watch and create a space of awareness. The space where there is the thought and you as the person experiencing the thought.

• From that place of awareness, the thoughts lose their power to control you. You can question them and choose how you want you to want to identify with them.

• If you choose to no longer identify with them, then you can choose new thoughts and feelings.

• Give your energy and focus to the new thoughts and feelings for long enough, until they become your new unconscious thoughts and feelings.

• Soon they will be your beliefs and with more empowering beliefs, you can experience a new reality.

Now you have broken the old pattern of negative thinking and started the cycle of your new life without negative thoughts.

— Shana

P.S.

if you want a system for changing your negative thoughts to positive thoughts and start creating your ideal life, let’s have a quick chat:

https://calendly.com/shanamdluli/claritycall