Negative Thoughts

RE: Negative Thoughts

What do you mean by 'Negative Thoughts'?

Do you mean that you think you are not able to do the activity/work or do you mean that you dislike the activity/work?

RE: Negative Thoughts

no i am not saying that i dislike, i mean to say that when i begin any work some negative thought come in my mind that ""If you do this work some mis happening will happen and work will not provide you the desired results""

RE: Negative Thoughts

Asrolover

first of all welcome to this forum, great to have you here and i hope that you will come back regularly.

Now, about what you shared. Thanks for that clarification though I believe that you had made it clear what you meeant in the original posting. But it is a thing of many coaches (including myself when needed!) to ask for clarification of what you said so that coach and client can operate on the same level of understanding.

Having said this, yes negative thinking is something that at times people feel because on the one hand we are human and on the other we allow the pressures of day to day life affect our confidence, motivation, goal setting. Let me explain briefly and then I can always come back and elaborate more fully. The fact is that as much as we would like to be positive in life we all are surrounded by situations and events that shake our determination, resilience and confidence. This is life! So, what we need to do is to use...."prehemptive medicine".

You see it is a bit like with an infectuos disease. You can get vaccinated so that the risks of catching it are greatly diminished (but they would not desappear completly BTW) or you can take the antibiotics afterwards to try and restore your health.

It is the same with our thinking and the attitudes that derive from that. Someone on here who was plagued by negative thinking has revently posted a beautiful testimony of her changed life. So what you need to do Astrolover is to indeed to boost your PMA (Positive mental Attitude).

How do you do this? Well reading books about positive thinking should help. But also a number of dare I say even more important things:
1. knowing who/what you really are and believing in yourself. There is no point in reading how good you can be when in your mind you are not convinced that YOU are good enough!

2. Set clear goals and strategies to achieve them and a suitable time table to do so.

3. Use positive affirmations to emcourage yourself but make sure that they are about you. So for exmple in my case it would need to be something like "Alex you are a great, fantastic coach that people love and appreciate."

4. Mix with people, the good friends, and do not allow any negative though to enter your mind.

5. Visualise your future and see it bright not dark. Imagine what it would look/feel/sound like and what effect it would have on you.

Well there is much more that I could share but I will pause here for now.

RE: Negative Thoughts

Alex Tana i am very thankful that you shared you knowledge in solving my problem. I want to know one more thing that why Negative thoughts appear with double intensity when you try to fight against them.

RE: Negative Thoughts

Astrolover,

I know that what I'm about to suggest doesn't resonate with everyone, so feel free to disregard it if it doesn't fit you but.....my feeling is that if your negative thoughts get stronger as you fight them, then fighting them isn't the answer you're looking for. Instead you could try to put some distance between 'you' and 'your thoughts'. This can be tricky, but if you can do it, you can then view the thought with curiosity rather than anger or frustration. Then you might find that the negative thought loses its power over you. In fact, you'll see that it never really had any power over you in the first place. If you can separate the thought from you, you can then see it as 'just a thought' rather than hard reality.

Wow, that's deep for me on a Monday night! Must go and do some tai chi to chill out a bit! :0)

Helen

RE: Negative Thoughts

Helen Thanx for your advise.

I would use the technique that you recomended to seperate thoughts from myself but only the negative one not all.

Tnx Once again.

RE: Negative Thoughts

I can only add strength to what Purpose has suggested and re-iterate the power of affirmations. Think of 3 or 4 affirmations that really grab you- I am a confident happy person that radiates positivity/ I release all negativity/ I feel loved, appreciated and energised..etc. Write them out and stick them up around the house, every time you pass them say them out loud, and really feel the strength of the words. Don't forget repeat them all two or three times when you wake up and 2 or 3 times before you go to bed!

You control your feelings, not the other way round so it's up to you- how do you want to feel today?

hope this helps!

RE: Negative Thoughts

Astrolover, Helen, Azalia

well thanks very much for keeping this thread alive whilst I have been away for a few days.And well done all for sharing positive contributions. Let me just comment quickly.

Yes Astrolover negativity has a tendency to ... stick. It's a bit like a cold or cough... it dopesn't want to go.Sothe best thing to do is to .... lick it out of the way and be patient (antibiotics take 5 days to come into action!!). hence Azalia's suggestion of the positive affirmations (your antibiotics) is excellent.

Often though you may need to indeed distance yourself from those thoughts as helen suggests. That is a good idea (echoed by some of my points in the original answer to you) but it is not as easy as it sounds. What we need to do is to "contast" those negative thoughts from the reality of you positive self. It is a bit like saying... I have a cold and it's a pain in the backside but I can still carry on with my life regardless. However what you need to do in such a case it take vitamins and other medications to help you. It's the same with negative thoughts... you need to try and get rid of them by "taking" in you what will contrast them. Hence the positive affirmations, the discovering the real you and so on.

One more thing that Azalia mentions and that is that we are people of choice. And what that means is that you can chose to dwell in negative thoughts or give a kick goodbye and decide, chose to be positive, regardless of the situation.

RE: Negative Thoughts

you can chose to dwell in negative thoughts or give a kick goodbye and decide, chose to be positive, regardless of the situation.

This is ooooohhhhhhh so true and Purpose has said this to me on several occasions. The choice is all yours. You can either carrying on in this way and think that there is nothing you can do or that your life just seems hopeless, or you can actually do something about it and think differently. Thats all it is, a different way of thinking. Change the negativitity to positively. I know it sounds so simple to say, believe me I have been there! But it is as simple as that.

It doesnt matter what the situation is, the minute you start to think negative thoughts stop yourself!
Begin the postive thoughts - ie; What am i doing, I can do this and I will do this (instead of I dont think i can do this) because thats all it is thinking.

What is that saying: Actions speak louder than words - or thoughts in this case

RE: Negative Thoughts

I want to thank to my entire friends of HP who helped me and taught me the way I can get rid of my negative thoughts;). From your help I applied these techniques in my daily routine and reduce my negative thinking up to 60% (what I analyzed). My mind is usually bombarded with negative thoughts the minute I get idle. I keep my mind busy most of the time but I get tired. How could I do this without getting tired?

Why I was unable to keep focus on my positive thoughts for a longer period?

RE: Negative Thoughts

1. knowing who/what you really are and believing in yourself. There is no point in reading how good you can be when in your mind you are not convinced that YOU are good enough!

Purpose, please could you clarify how you would achieve this? Thank you.

RE: Negative Thoughts

KiraBira

Michelle you are fantastic and the changes that I have seen in you since I have known you, which is a while now, have been incredible. And most of those changes have started because.... you have chosen to be positive. Sure, we all have work to do in us and on us; but it all starts from there. What ever else we need to do will come as a consequence and as a by=product of developing a strong and healthy positive approach. Well done, keep the boat going now!

RE: Negative Thoughts

Astrolover

great to read your comments and good to have those two questions you ask.

Well the naswer is already within you. You see my friend if you are positive and think positive why on earth would you start thinking negavtive. As Michelle said very well above your posting, we can chose. So at any time, why would you want to chose negative thinking?

In other words the length of time your positive thinking will last is.... up to you! You can make it last 5 minutes or you can chose to make it last .... a life time! I know what I have chosen.

Now, if you do that more and more, over and over again guess what, positive thinking will become your new habit (which is what happend to Michelle!) and from there on you can look at situations in a totally different perspective. So the secret is to remember that you have a choice, you are in control!

RE: Negative Thoughts

Flowerlight

Ok, let’s create a typical situation and I will use me as a guine pig.

Let’s say that I am low in self-confidence and possibly in self-esteem. Hence my negative thoughts that things would not work out, that everything will go wrong and so on.

Now one typical suggestion is that you will need to read positive affirmations, that you need to read positive books and listen to positive stuff. All these things are great and wonderful and helpful. BUT…

But, and here is my point, all of these would be totally useless unless and until I am convinced that I AM able to do that, I AM able to say that, I AM able to go there and so on. But in turn this begs the question, how can I be sooo convinced? Well let me turn the question around.

When is it that I am sooo convinced of something? Surely when I know that something/someone and can therefore trust the outcomes. Well that is the same with us. If I do not know who I am, what I am good at, what I am capable of, what is my real potential… how on earth am I going to trust myself? And that is why reading, listening, speaking positive stuff is helpful; BUT the real change starts when I start to believe in me and who and what I am.

I hope this helps but feel free to ask more if you want. I am here, we are all here to help one another.

RE: Negative Thoughts

Thank you for clarifying that Purpose.

I guess I'm still a bit confused as to how to get to that stage of completely convincing myself by utterly believing & knowing myself when I have so many options/paths to choose from. I was hoping to put the cart before the horse & say ok, here are the steps to being positive now go out & get your heart's desire! I guess you're saying that our subconcious needs to be inline with our concious mind otherwise we won't get away from the starting gate. Just realised i'm using a lot of horse analogies - how peculiar! Thanks again, more help would be much appreciated.

Jacquie

RE: Negative Thoughts

Jacquie

great to read your comments. Well there is never a short answer to one's life situations and issues and the beuaty of something life coaching is in fact the opportunity to realise that we ahve so many opportunities, possibilities, choices open before us that we never even thought about.And this concept applies here too.

You see when I say that your need, your starting need, is to know yourself and be confident about it is a bit like, using a horsing analogy, the rider who is ready for a race. The rider needs to know the horse to enable him/her to ride the horse to victory. In fact it does not really matter how good or bad the horse is, in a sense, provided that the rider rides the horse effectively.

Now, how can the rider do that? Well he or she needs to know and understand the horse, the rider needs to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the horse, what the horse likes and dislikes, where the horse can be best and where it may have difficulties. Only then will the rider be a good rider of that horse. Are you getting the analogy?

The same is true for us Jacquie. We need to know well what our strengths and weaknesses are, what we can do best by ourselves and where wwe need help from someone, what we can face head on and what is best to avoid or find alternative pathjs around. And so on.

Now, once that has taken place, once I know who and what I am then I have a winning spirit in me, I have confidence that what ever situation I will be facing I ccan and will be successful. That confidence is the by-product of the fact that I know myself and I know that what ever comes I will be able to face it well. Let me give you a personal example, just a recent experience.

I was recently giving a presentation to a small company and I had asked them to make available a screen to project a presentation in Powerpoint and a projector too. Now, once I got to the company I was told that unfortunately the projector was not working and that therefore I could not do it via Powerpoint. At this point I could have panicked, perhaps postponed the meeting with the risk of losing a potential client or ... just carry on regardless. That is what I did. Why? Because I was and am confident that I could have done the job at hand all the same. And that is what I did and the presentation, just using my dynamic speaking style and coaching methods was very successful.

To sum it all up. I was successful because I strongly believe in myself, my skills and my abilities. But how can I do that? Very simply because I know who and what I am, what I am able to deliver, what I can do and also.... what I can't do (but ehi... don't tell anyone about this!!). So what are the steps to use your words? There are only two simple steps. In fact the whole process is so simple that people often ask me, what is it so simple? And the answer always is.... yes, so simple. So what are the steps:
1. spend time, and seek help from a coach, to understand who and what you are, what is your character/personality like, what is your potential, how to identify and overcome your self-limiting beliefs and your points of lesser strength.
2. Believe that given who and what you are (and always make sure that you remember who and what you are in every situation) go out in confidence and conquer the world (well, what ever your goals are!).

Jacquie feel free to ask me for more support and help and you are also welcomed to PM if you wish. Or take advanatage of my coaching experience both as a life and business coach. take care.

RE: Negative Thoughts

Once again thanx,

I do realized that our thoughts are like untamed horses, to tame them we need to know there source & reason from where they come to control them. I realized that the time i get ideal i was mostly affected by these negative toughts. So now a days i am trying to keep myself busy. Other thing that i want to share and all of you had already shared is that we must set our goals in life only them we can keep ourself busy.

RE: Negative Thoughts

[quoAstrolover

uhm... interesting what you ask/suggest.

I agree with you 100% that we need to set clear golas in life AND develop the right strategies to reach them. We have recently talked a lot about this and encourage you to tale a look at the threads that have alreadtt been posted. But feel free to start something new if appropriate. As a coach, that is part of what I do; I help people identify and set golas that are clear5 and timed for them and then support them all the way by creating with them strategies that will enable them to do so and be successful.

The other issue that you mention, very interesting and certainly worth exploring with a separate thread is the concept of "being/ keeping yourself busy". I will not answer fully here Astrolover as i think it's worth exploring separately. But I just want you to think about it for a moment. What does being busy mean to you and why do you want to keep busy. Think about this and then come to the new thread I am going to create and post your comments there.

te]astrolover

RE: Negative Thoughts

Well alex i do like to share my view on our new thread "Being busy". But at the same time i do like to continue with this thread.

🙂

RE: Negative Thoughts

Dear Alex

Thank you again for sharing your knowledge. I'm beginning to see a clearer picture now. I know, for example, that (using your example), I could not continue to give a presentation with or without the right tools because I have an inherent lack of confidence of talkign to a group. I know my horse would let me down in that particular race! So I suppose I need to focus on strengthening my confidence? Or would it happen, that once I'm doing something I love that the confidenc would follow? For example, if I chose to do a Pilates teachers course one day in the future, because I really enjoy it & would like to do it daily & share my experience with others, once I had qualified the nerves of talking to a room full of strangers would disappear because I believe in my expertise and abilities? What about visualisation in that case, does it help to visualise you being a confident person or are you just masking the issue by 'fooling' the brain? I'm asking this because I've recently been thinking of hypnotherapy to overcome fear of talking alound to a group, something I'm worried will hold me back from things in the future.

RE: Negative Thoughts

Dear Flowerlight -re your concerns about teaching Pilates. You are quite correct in hypothesising that your fears may disappear when you feel fully in charge of your topic , and don't forget that as the teacher of beginners' classes you are going to be the best informed person in the room on your subject. So you will know your horse, although you'll get to know him better as the years go by.

Your course will teach you how to teach, and you will spend hours observing talented teachers and learning how they teach. you will end up stealing phrases, techniques, exercises from many people, and you won't be thrown in the deep end - it will be a little supervised teaching practice first, after everyone is sure you ae ready for it.

You will find most people share your fears,(it's very high on the list of stresses for most people).

I've been in teaching 15 years ( 4 in Pilates) - and the other day went on an NLP and teaching Pilates course which gave me a whole new box of tools - making me a better rider of my horse.(apologies for the mixed metaphors - perhaps they are new reins!)

Hypnotherapy would be good - but have you thought about using tapping?

Sharonxx

RE: Negative Thoughts

Dear Sharon
Thank you for your excellent advice and reassurance. I'm sorry it's taken so long to reply. I have only recently heard of tapping but it's ringing a bell (as it were!) for me so I think i'll explore it further. Thanks again for sharing your wisdom - much appreciated.
Best wishes,
Jacquie

RE: Negative Thoughts

Gr8 discussion & excellent advices from all of you, I have improved a lot from the day i made this post and feel much better about my thoughts & feeling. Also I am able to tame few of my Untammed horses (Thoughts), this all coz of you ppls.:)

RE: Negative Thoughts

Hi guys

just to contribute further to the discussion and picking up on a few things. Anything that can help build self confidence is certainly to be welcomed and these days there are different ways and techniques to do so. The common point of all these is however based on the awareness of who and what we are. As i said before would you trust something or someone that you do not know ver well and are not familiar with? So the common awnser to all the various ways that you can use to build self confidence is to know yourself. And let us not forget that self confidence very often goes hand in hand with her sister called self esteem. And so what happens is that very often if are low in one you are probably low in the other as well.

Visualisation are an excellent way to project yourself in a different situation and yes in a way to trick your brain. But tricking your brain is part of overcoming limiting beleifs and self imposed limitations. And if you visualise in the right way the process can be very powerfull indeed.

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Hi friends,

Can you people suggest me some Selfhelp books, through which i can stay motivated & eliminate negative thoughts from my life. 🙂

RE: Negative Thoughts

My very first post and the reason i joined Healthypages. You all people really helped me and now i have changed my self a lot Thanx you all guy's of healthy pages

RE: Negative Thoughts

how do you stop negative thoughts,that lead to fear?
fear,in the sense,of not being able to leave the house,open the door?
what triggers it all?
D.x

Hi

Rather than trying to fight against your negative thoughts anothermethod isjust to acknowledge them, breath and let them go. Have you heard of the book, Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson? I personally found this book very useful.

Kind wishes,

Tammy

RE: Negative Thoughts

Hi

yes i find that if i am accepting of negative thoughts and then confront them they cease to exist. I feel that the mind creates fear whichtakes over our body and spirit, if we dont letthe mind succeed then fear will disappear.