This is a very good secret to an amazing life. That is to catch yourself thinking negatively and toss in some gratitude and appreciation. It will not only dramatically improve the quality of your emotional state, but will change the way you start to view and interact with the world. Does that sound a little bold or over the top? Ask yourself this question. Do you treat people differently when you are feeling angry verses grateful? How about sad verses filled with joy? Even if this difference in treatment is not conscious, if we are being honest, most of us must agree that we do treat people differently based on our emotional state. You have more patience and are more forgiving if you are in a better mood. You are better able to view the positive side of a situation.
Again, we see that gratitude is the antidote to negativity. That is why the more processes to foster gratitude you have in your life, the better. When we are in a negative state, or at the very least going down that path, it can be hard to come up with something we appreciate. That is why doing so ahead of time is so vital. How do we now when ‘ahead of time’ is? We don’t. Our brains can pop up with a negative thought without a warning. That is why we should always be on the lookout for what we can be grateful for. We can do this is so many ways. Find one that works for you. Next, make sure to record those thoughts.
You can start a gratitude journal where you write down daily what you are grateful for. You can have an album of pictures in your phone of people, places and things that you are grateful for. You could even record positive affirmations of what you appreciate on your phone. That way, when negativity shows up, you do not have to think, you have something ready. Here is another secret. This will seem difficult, if not impossible, at first. The more you do it, however, the easier it will become. Before long, you will not only catch your negative thoughts quicker, but they will seem to come less often and they will be outnumbered by grateful thoughts!
Who hasn’t had the occasional stray thought? If we are to believe what science tells us, that would be nobody. It is said that we have roughly 60,000 thoughts a day and that roughly 80% of them are negative. Both of those numbers really depend on the person. I know several people who manage to maintain a positive disposition in the face of the most challenging odds. I also know people who somehow manage to keep the number of thoughts they have well below the 60,000 mark. Some I wonder if they ever get to the double digits. Most of us fall into the numbers that science puts out.
It may be next to impossible to fight off the arrival of negative thoughts. Doing so can often make them push harder to arrive. What are we to do? Adjust how we view negative thoughts. We can ask ourselves what these thoughts may be trying to teach us. We can ask ourselves why we are reacting so negatively to them. There are a million lessons we can learn from our negative thoughts. It can also be helpful to turn it into a game of sorts. Noticing and adjusting to negative thoughts can be a challenge, but it does not have to be a negative one. Start timing how long it takes you to overcome a negative thought. Start keeping track of the time between negative thoughts and see if you can’t go just a little bit longer next time. When you do, celebrate!
Negative thoughts are a part of life and they can serve a good purpose. Let us put them to use for us. Have fun with the journey. Be calm in the knowledge that your life is improving with each positive thought you have. Let us know any tools and strategies you have for dealing with negative thoughts.
This is so true. Even yours truly, the man who wrote A Happy Life for Busy People and Living the Dream, has days where all my thoughts seem negative. This time of year, when the ground is covered in gray snow and ice and the sun rarely shines, my spirit can seem just as gloomy.
How do you beat those blues? First, acknowledge them. If we try to ignore negative feelings, they only seem to grow. If we observe them with an almost detached sense of reality, they seem to lose their grip. Often, I’ll talk to myself and say, “I’m feeling really bummed today. I wonder why?”
After that, I begin to shift my focus. The easiest way to do this is with gratitude. Focusing on what is working changesour focus and life completely. Reflection on positive memories and things we are looking forward to gives us a great mental vacation as well.
We all will have negative thoughts and emotions. Acknowledge them, observe them if you must, but whatever you do, don’t feed them!
In the grand scheme of things, ants are pretty cool creatures. They have super human strength. They don’t have lungs or ears. Some ants are both farmers and can swim. They have two stomachs and some species are asexual. If you are anything like me, you probably didn’t know many of these fun amazing facts. Do you know when ants suck? When they are in your house exploring your watermelon, ruining picnics and crawling between your toes as your are sleeping. Sorry for that horrible thought, but it is the month of scary things. Generally, even if we admire all of their cool traits, we would rather not have ants in our lives.
This post is about a different kind of ant. If you noticed in our title, A.N.T. is an acronym. It stands for automatic negative thoughts. These are the pesky little thoughts that can creep into our minds while we are enjoying our watermelon. It can ruin a seemingly fun time we are having at a picnic. For all I know they might even crawl between our toes as we are sleeping. They certainly crawl through our minds no matter what we are doing. Just like the pesky little insects, they can literally come out of nowhere and multiply by the thousands!
Much like the interesting, although annoying, insects, negative thoughts can be tricky to get rid of. If you find yourself having several negative thoughts ruining your picnics or crawling through your toes while you are sleeping, the question is how to rid ourselves of them. We are going to use several mental versions of the ant killer above. In this case, it would be A.N.T. killer. The first is to acknowledge they are there. If you do your best to ignore the ants in your pantry, not only will they stay there, they may very well grow in number. Same holds true of our negative thoughts. Closing your eyes and saying over and over, “There are no ants.” will not get them out of your pantry or your head. What will? We are going to look at a few steps to take thatare not only affective, but enjoyable as well.
First things first. Get a handle on the A.N.T.s you have. I recommend doing this for a the very minimum of 3 days. Carry a little pocket notebook with you and jot down any of the negative thoughts you have. We can’t begin to deal with something unless we have a concrete idea of what it is. At the end of each day take a look at your list. Are these thoughts true? Most of the time the answer is ‘no’. In this case the simple solution is every time you catch yourself thinking that thought, counter with a firm dismissal and replacement of a positive thought. An example would be if you are constantly saying to yourself, “I am so stupid!” or some version of that. As soon as the thought enters your mind, say to yourself, “I am not stupid! This is my mind’s weak attempt to hold me back from becoming all I might be!” This is not only true, but correcting yourself and reminding yourself that you are in control of your mind and not the other way around, will go a long way to turning things around. Follow this up with a more constructive thought. “I am intelligent in many ways and expanding my knowledge base daily.” In fact, spend some time thinking of what an empowering statement would be to you. Jot that down in your notebook you carry with you. This may seem awkward at first, but it will feel empowering soon enough.
Another tool is to surround yourself with things that are inspiring. As you can see, I am writing at Starbucks today and this is my screensaver. It is a picture of myself and my lovely lady, Margie. Not only does her cute face make me smile, but the knowledge that there is someone who loves me that I get to come home to is a very positive thought. I suggest using screensavers, as many of us look at them a million times a day, to inspire us. If that is a picture of the person you love, your dog, a special spot in nature or an inspiring quote. Do this on your phone, your computer and any other place you can think of. Print out pictures and place them on your desk, your mirror and here is a great idea, keep one on your dash in your car! We drive almost everywhere these days and having some inspiring picture to look at along with some ‘feel good’ music will make that journey an empowering one. Even if some A.N.T. tries to hitch a ride.
A few last thoughts about A.N.T. or automatic negative thoughts. Just like the insects, they are never going to be totally gone. One will always continue to pop up now and then and be dealt with, whether that means catching it and setting it free, or stomping on it and crushing it into submission. The next thing to remember is just like insects in your home, thoughts in your head are best dealt with quickly before they have a chance to establish themselves and start to grow. If you have an established colony of A.N.T.s in your head, know that it may take longer than if there were just a few strays. Also, remember after extermination, if you don’t keep on top of them they can come back and start another infestation. There are also many ways to get rid of ants, both the thoughts and the insects. Some work better than others and some work better in certain circumstances than others. We have looked at just a few in this brief article. I would love to hear your methods for getting rid of the automatic negative thoughts in your life. If you want to include something for the insects as well that wouldn’t hurt.
How many of us find ourselves falling into the trap of the first column in the photo above? After over 20 years of both studying and teaching self-improvement, I am confident in saying…I do. Yes, even those of us who should ‘know better’ can still fall victim into letting our thoughts get the best of us. In my book, A Happy Life for Busy People, I equate this to a snowball rolling downhill, it gets bigger and bigger with each passing second. A most recent example for me is when it was near freezing as I left for work in the middle of the month of May. As I am not a fan of the cold at all my thoughts were on the fast track to nowhere good. Thinking about how much I didn’t like the cold, how much I wished I were on vacation or lived somewhere warmer. I began to think about how it didn’t seem fair I had to wake up and go to work when it was so unseasonably cold. If my thoughts were allowed to keep going like that, how do you think I would have shown up for work that day? With a positive attitude ready to face the day and any challenges that would go with it? Not hardly.
You may be thinking, “If this guy who has been in the field of self-improvement for over two decades still has his thoughts run away on him, what hope do I have?” The answer is plenty! Success in life is progress, not perfection. We are always going to slip up. If we continually beat ourselves up over that, we will most likely find ourselves living in the first column of the picture above. The secret to living an amazing life is not to never have any negative thoughts or tough days, but to be able to recognize them and take actions to correct and move on from them. The million dollar question is how do we do that?
Having some self-care ideas and actions at the ready can be the solution we all need. Personally, I love having my ‘happy playlist’ or list of songs I know put me in a good mood. I love having images that remind me of fun, warm tropical destinations. I keep them in my phone, at the calendar at work and on the occasional travel mug. Speaking of calendars, I have a inspirational day-by-day calendar that wakes me up with something positive to think of every morning. If you are low on ideas for self care ideas for your life, feel free to borrow some of mine, or even print out the list above. It can work even better when you combine a few. Using the list above, that can mean dancing to your favorite song while laughing out loud. You could make a journal entry celebrating your wins while relaxing in a hot bath. There are so many options. My only suggestion is to have a list or idea in place before the challenges come along. It can prove difficult, if not impossible, to be resourceful when you are in a bad emotional state.
Just remember when you find your thoughts running away on you that success is progress not perfection. Look at it as a great opportunity to practice some much needed self-care. A good time to pause and focus on what is really important and what really brings us joy. The more you practice this, the better you will become. The one thing that you can be sure of is that life will give you plenty of opportunities to practice.
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 