Wipe Away Negative Thinking
How to Wipe Away the Negative Thinking or Thought Process?
1. Practice Mindfulness
In order to acquire more positive thinking patterns, you must become fully aware of your current ways of thinking. By cultivating mindfulness, you can identify the thinking patterns that have become so habitual, and then decide whether or not to engage with them.
Incorporate mindfulness into your morning or evening routine, sitting quietly for a few minutes (and gradually moving longer with your practice). When a negative thought arises, instead of attaching yourself to it, simply redirect focus to your breath.
2. Challenge Your 'Inner Critic'
Your 'inner critic' loves convincing you of things that are just not true, often making you feel horrible about yourself, about how you look or feel or act.
Think of this particular voice as someone separate from you. Challenge the lies it tries to feed onto you. Thank that inner voice for its input but then simply say: No, thanks, not now or delete or go away or I am not interested - whatever works for you.
3. Know Your Trigger Points
Occasionally a few people or certain circumstances may set you on an endless emotional roller coaster ride of negative thoughts so it is important to be aware of them. This could be as trivial as a passing remark by your boss or could stem from taking important difficult life decisions. These triggers could set your thoughts to become highly critical of yourself or to even question your self-worth and self-esteem .
Sometimes these triggers can suddenly upset your emotional balance however knowing that these are happening or knowing that you are prone to it can help you to take some corrective measures. So awareness of these triggers can help and you can prepare yourself. Getting back in control of your thoughts patterns requires efforts from within and helps you prevent falling back into old negative thinking patterns over and over again.
4. Write it down
Putting your feelings down onto paper is a great way to not only unburden your thoughts but to also learn more about the nature of them. Often you are not aware of how negative your thoughts are.
By writing them down, you can identify the areas that require your attention. Journaling preferably in the morning or before hitting the bed can transfer your stream of negative thoughts onto paper and then reading it back to yourself can make you feel them more objectively and get rid of them.
5. Positive Affirmation
Reciting a mantra or chanting or positive affirmation is a great way to pull you out from the stream of negative thoughts and get you into the present moment. It can be recited when you feel negativity creeping in or multiple times throughout the day in order to get into the habit of not focusing on negative thoughts.
You can choose any word or phrase that will help bring you back into the present and remind you to focus more on the positive always.
6. Change Your Surroundings
Sometimes your thoughts can seem so loud that the best thing to do is to change your physical surroundings for sure. Take a walk in nature , go for a run/ jog, or cycle or taking a drive or meeting up with a friend or visit a movie theatre or anything else that you fancy will certainly help. The point is to engage in something other than the negative cycle so that you can come back to the problem later when you are in a clearer mindset.
"People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills . . . There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind. . . . So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself. - Marcus Aurelius
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Trishna Patnaik. (2020, December 18). How to Wipe Away the Negative Thinking or Thought Process? . Medindia. Retrieved on Dec 23, 2024 from https://www.medindia.net/health/lifestyle/how-to-wipe-away-the-negative-thinking-or-thought-process.htm.
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Trishna Patnaik. "How to Wipe Away the Negative Thinking or Thought Process? ". Medindia. Dec 23, 2024. <https://www.medindia.net/health/lifestyle/how-to-wipe-away-the-negative-thinking-or-thought-process.htm>.
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Trishna Patnaik. "How to Wipe Away the Negative Thinking or Thought Process? ". Medindia. https://www.medindia.net/health/lifestyle/how-to-wipe-away-the-negative-thinking-or-thought-process.htm. (accessed Dec 23, 2024).
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Trishna Patnaik. 2020. How to Wipe Away the Negative Thinking or Thought Process? . Medindia, viewed Dec 23, 2024, https://www.medindia.net/health/lifestyle/how-to-wipe-away-the-negative-thinking-or-thought-process.htm.