Many people think I am positive person, but only I know how much difficulty I have in dealing with my negative thoughts. Everyone has negative thoughts. No one is immune from it. A research says that a person has around 60,000 thoughts every day and out of which more than 80% are negative. These negative thoughts are not bad as such, but rather essential, because they have been the determinant to human survival in the process of evolution.
So how does one stay positive despite all
such negative thoughts? I take conscious effort to convert my negative thoughts
into positive thoughts and this is the technique I follow and find effective
too. “Whenever I get a negative thought, I smash it down with a positive
action.”
Let me explain this with an example: Few
days back, one of my social acquaintance, had posted in a WhatsApp group, a birthday pic of herself,
performing various social roles. The first thought that came to mind was that
she was self-boasting, which is not a true reflection of her. But then, I asked
myself, “Who am I to judge that. What is really bothering me?” and I realized
that it was just an ego play, that was showing up in form of such contempt. So,
I quicky posted a congratulations message as a response to the post and in some
time, I started to feel good about myself.
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I
am sure many of you might have faced such situations. It is so common today,
for people to post so many trivial things in social media, such as baking a
cake or dining out or watching the first show of a movie. Our normal thought
might be, “Why the heck would
someone post this? It is OK to ignore it,
without any comment. But, if you feel that you don’t want to respond, because
you are feeling envy, then the best way to counter the envy is to respond with
a positive message by saying something like “WoW”, “That is lovely.” “ I am happy for you”. “Glad to see you all
smiles” or at least an emoji of a thumbs up, clapping hand or an appropriate
smiley. It might sound as an inauthentic expression of self, but when you do
that you will experience the positive feeling that that action generates.
So, how does it work? In psychology, there is a concept of Thoughts
– Action – Feelings Triad, which is supposed to be connected to one another. By
changing one of them, which is in your immediate control, you can change the
things, which are not in your immediate control. When we choose a positive
action, we can create a positive feeling, which will ultimately lead to a
positive thought too. So, here you can see the link of the chain of events that
follow one another: Negative Thought – Positive Action – Positive Feeling –
Positive Thought. This is a simple yet effective strategy, we can follow to
smash down our negative thoughts.
There is a nice saying “An idle mind
is a devil’s workshop”. It is so true. The devil’s work is to produce negative
thoughts. So, whenever you are getting some negative thoughts, recognize the
devil and engage in some positive physical activity, to combat and destroy it. I
have heard people say, I am not in a mood to do anything. That is when they
should be actually doing something, otherwise they might get into a spiral
downward loop of negative thoughts. For instance, if you are feeling down or
stressed, just take a brisk walk or get into some physical activity and you can
see, for yourself how your mood transforms.
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