Negative thinking

I meet a lot of people who are negative thinkers. In fact, I used to be one myself — and still am some days. Most people who are negative thinkers don’t realize that they create their own experience, and so they continue thinking badly for large parts of their lives while wondering why everything is so damn crappy. ‘Why does this always happen to me?’ they think, and ‘Why doesn’t anything good ever happen?’ — These are forms of negative thinking and they will get you crappy results, even if you want good things to happen.

So many people who are predominantly negative thinkers do not even realize that they are thinking that way. That’s because it has become an every day habit to these people and the negative thoughts have become an ‘automatic’ reaction. If only these people knew that their negative thinking patterns reinforce their negative life experiences. If only they knew that their thoughts actually create their reality.

The thing about negative thinking is it brings your whole world down, including everyone around you. You put off a negative vibe and so you attract negative people (if you attract anybody at all) and negative situations while repelling the positive people and situations that you’d like to experience. This amplifies the feelings of disconnect and in turn amps up the negative thinking that you’re already experiencing, creating more of the same — it becomes a vicious cycle of negativity.

The good news is there is a way to change your negative thinking habit into a positive thinking habit. Actually, there are all sorts of ways, but I am going to show you one of the ways that has helped me change my negative thoughts to positive ones. But I’ll get to that a little farther down in the post. First I want to talk about some different forms of negative thinking.

Negative thinking of the self

The worst kind of negative thinking is when you think negatively about yourself. This is the worst attitude you could possibly have, especially if you want to experience good things in your lifetime. If you don’t appreciate yourself do you think anything else will appreciate you? Why would good things happen to you if you don’t even appreciate what you have already got? If you are involved in this sort of negative thinking then please do not take this article lightly — actually try the solution I provide below. If you do not try it, it will not work. I thought it was stupid and lame at first too – then I tried it.

Negative thinking of the self is when you mentally or even verbally call yourself down. Some people do this every chance they get while proudly stating that they are the victims of the universe. Believing you are a victim makes you the victim. Telling yourself you’re a loser or that you’re stupid is one of the stupidest things you can do. Stop it. Even the occasional negative thinking about yourself should be reversed by using the method outlined below.

If you think ‘Oh it doesn’t really make that big of a difference if I call myself an idiot when I do something that I know is dumb, does it?’ you’re wrong. It does make a very big difference when you do this to yourself on a regular basis! Quit thinking that it’s stupid and try my solution, you might be surprised at the results you get when you try new things.

Don’t diss your cells

If you get sick a lot, have a chronic illness, cancer, or some other dis-ease you should remember to never, ever, curse your cells or body parts. Don’t tell your kidneys they suck. How well do you think they’ll serve you then? Imagine the cells in your kidneys as your employees. If you call your employees into a meeting and tell them that a bunch of monkeys could do their jobs, do you think they want to work very hard for you? No, probably not. Well when you tell your kidneys that they are weak or stupid it can have the same effect.

I read in a book many years ago that you should never curse your organs. It struck me as an important line in a not so important book and I still recall it frequently to this day. It immediately struck me as a wise old forgotten truth. Your cells are only doing what they think they are supposed to be doing. Stop sending them mixed messages and definitely don’t insult them. They’re only following your instructions.

Negative thinking about others

Another type of negative thinking is when you think negative thoughts about other people. This is another directly offensive kind of negative thinking and should also be avoided. This is where I struggled for a long time, some days I still have negative thoughts directed at other people but I usually catch myself and replace the thought with a positive one or a well wish. I’m so glad to have been able to remove much of this type of thinking from my life. It’s made my world a much happier place.

Negative thoughts about other people are essentially negative thoughts about yourself that have been dressed up to look like something they are not. Notice the negative thoughts you have about other people — what do they say about you?

Examine your motives for thinking negative things about other people. Why are you doing it? Are you jealous of them for some reason? Do they have something that you want? What is it that you don’t like about them? What makes you react negatively to them? Are your thoughts justified? Chances are they’re not.

The negative things you think about other people reveal more about yourself than they do about the person you’re directing them at. Try to figure out what’s causing you to react to the situation negatively, then try to change it to something more positive. Think constructive solutions, not destructive insults.

Even friendly ‘jokes’ that are regularly negative will have an effect. You might think it’s funny and just kidding around, but over the long run it does wear on a person. At the present moment you might not believe that, but in my experience, it’s true. I recently met someone who calls everyone a loser, including herself. She does this several times a day and is only joking around — I don’t think anyone thinks she’s serious when she says it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not having an effect. The more you hear something, and the more you say something, the more you start to believe and become it. ‘Hahaha! Good one, man! You’re such an idiot!’ does more than just get a little bit of a laugh out of your buds — it attracts more negativity!

This also applies to groups of people. Take any religious, political, or cultural group as an example. If you allow yourself to think negatively towards Christians, Indians, or Liberals, you are still putting off negative vibes. Like attracts like, and so when you think that all Mexicans are dirty thieves or all Americans are fat and lazy, you are sending those vibes out into the universe and asking for something similar in experience — so then of course every chance you get to reinforce that negative belief will make itself obvious. You’ll find all the dirty thieving Mexicans and see all of the fat Americans everywhere you look — because your negative thinking pattern has you tuned in to those things!

Subtle negatives

Then there are the more subtle varieties of negative thinking. These negative thought patterns are not as easy to see as the ones mentioned above but they are still quite damaging to the human experience. These are a variety of negative thoughts about objects, places, things, events, and other ‘stuff’ that isn’t yourself or another being. These thoughts are the hardest to catch, making them the hardest to change as well.

Many people think it’s perfectly okay to call objects stupid. ‘Damn that stupid chair! I stub my toe on it every time!’ or ‘My car is such a piece of shit. It’s always breaking down.’ But this type of thinking is bad for many of the same reasons that the other forms mentioned above are. It attracts more negativity!

Are you starting to see a pattern here? Negative attracts negative. It’s pretty simple. When you grasp this concept you can begin to see why life seems to continually go in the wrong direction for some people. They’re playing the game wrong! It’s like going into a restaurant, asking for a Caesar salad and then getting mad when they don’t bring you a tossed. You’re not telling the waitress what you actually want!

If you’re looking for good things to happen to you, you’ll have to start thinking more positively. Until you come to grips with that you’re going to continually bring yourself an unending stream of negative thoughts, events, relationships, and emotions. The sooner you begin to replace your negative thinking patterns with more positive ones, the sooner you’ll start getting the things you want out of life. And the sooner you can start living life consciously instead of wandering through life miserable and unfulfilled.

Reversing your negative thinking patterns

To begin reversing your negative thinking pattern you first must try to make yourself uncomfortable with negative thinking. When you notice a negative thought, delete it from consciousness immediately! Teach yourself to catch those stray negative thoughts that get past your filters and send them on their way packing! Understanding how to do this is the key to mastering yourself and experiencing positive results like you never have before.

Replace your thoughts like ‘I’ll never get this!‘ or ‘My job is a dead end‘ with thoughts like ‘If I keep making all these mistakes I’ll have made every mistake in the book! At least I’ll have learned what not to do! ‘ or ‘The next opportunity to improve my job situation will reveal itself to me soon, it has to! And I’ll jump all over it when it does!’

Give this a good honest try — if you don’t do it there’s no way it will work for you. You may feel embarrassed or stupid for doing this, but so what? Who cares? The hardest time I had with personal development stuff was overcoming my own embarrassment with myself. I wasn’t embarrassed because other people knew what I was doing — nobody else knew! I just felt stupid trying to attach a positive thought to every negative thought that I noticed. I don’t really know why I felt like that but I did, and I’m sure I’m not the only one out there. Don’t let these feelings control you.

If you are embarrassed to try this method, just suck it up and do it anyway. Why be embarrassed about trying to improve yourself? You don’t even have to tell anybody you’re doing it — just do it! If you really want to quit your negative thinking then have no shame and give it an honest try.

To really kick-start this method consider using a 30 day trial to start forming your new positive thinking habit. For 30 days make the commitment to catch your negative thoughts and attach/replace them with positive ones. Every time you find yourself thinking something negative, stop it immediately and form a positive one to take its place. Try and form positive ‘replacement’ thoughts that encourage growth and improvement.

A recent example from my own life was just a few weeks ago while I was traveling in my car. The guy in the car next to me started changing lanes when I was right beside him — almost running me off the road. When he finally noticed me next to him he swerved back into his lane and then stomped on his accelerator. As he zoomed off ahead of me he had to slam on his brakes as he almost ran into the back of the truck that was in front of him. He must not have been paying attention to where he was headed, I think he may have been trying to see me in his mirror or something. The truck was going quite a bit slower than we were and I ended up passing the both of them. As I passed the first car that almost hit me, the guy in the drivers seat flipped me off with his middle finger and a really ugly frown.

In the past I would have been just as angry as he appeared to be — but this time I simply wished the fellow a better day. He was obviously having a much worse day than I was and I sincerely hoped that his day get better — especially since his stress was to the point that it was effecting his driving – he could have caused a collision on the highway that day.

On that particular day I noticed how naturally it seemed to not have the negative kind of reaction that I used to have all the time to almost everything. Instead, I had a positive reaction in its place. I know that that time it was so smooth because of my ongoing efforts to catch and replace all of my negative thoughts and is a direct result of my personal growth efforts.

With enough practice, you too can start thinking better naturally. As you continue to reverse your negative thinking patterns you will become more and more comfortable with positive thoughts and less and less comfortable with negative ones. You will begin to make a habit of having positive reactions instead of always having negative ones and the universe will reflect that. After 30 days your world will look much different than it does when you’re constantly putting off negative vibes, positivity will begin to take hold, and those positive thoughts will behave just like the negative ones did — attracting more of the same.

Cheers!