We all have negative thoughts, we all have self doubts and put ourselves down. But it is important for us to change those into positive, empowering thoughts. This blog is about how to change the negativity into positivity.
How are you feeling today?
As a lot of you may know, I suffered from adrenal fatigue and I still get it from time to time, so I do a lot of reading about it. One book I read talked about mindset and something I tried to encourage is to out your feelings and out your emotions. It's about not suppressing what comes up, it's not about telling yourself you should feel good or feel alive; it’s about going through whatever is coming for you and turning up for it. Writing it down really helps, so that’s why we journal.
Catch those bad thoughts!
One thing I learnt while doing my NLP training was that there is a record that plays over and over in your mind, it can be rude and abusive, and it certainly is not something you would say to a friend or even an enemy. So the trick is to catch what you say to yourself over and over. For example, if you wanted to go for a walk and didn’t, or if you ate three donuts for breakfast; those negative thoughts you had afterwards, try to catch them and write them down. This could be in a little notebook or as a note in your phone. As you write them down, it can be a bit of a shock what you’re saying to yourself, but until you acknowledge it, there is nothing you can do to change it.
So what to do next…
As you start to write these down, maybe over a period of a few days or even just dedicating one day to really listen to what you’re saying to yourself. Then you need to try to identify what key phrases that you are saying over and over again; try to prioritise them. You can see what you really focus on that is most likely impacting your mood, emotion and even your motivation because you are constantly putting yourself down, even if you are not aware of it. There will be times when it’s really obvious to you, and times it is very very gently and very subtle, just niggling away at you.
Once you have identified the most frequent, most regular or most intense ones, that is when you can start working on them. You are going to look them in the face to help move through any kind of pain and healing, you have to look at and say to yourself “right, this is it, it may bring tears, it may bring anger, and it may bring up things I don't want to think about” but this will help you to move through it and to help move those emotions out.
Make yourself aware of your current situation
When you have identified it, when you have looked at it, and when you have dealt with it, whether that is through journaling or not. You can then start to work around it, you can use affirmations. Let’s say you are feeling really sluggish and you’re like “no I’m really really slim”, it doesn’t have to be a complete contrast, it can just be something to make you aware of your current situation and to know you are already managing it. It can help you to feel good in yourself and to tell yourself that you will feel better when you accept yourself. It doesn’t have to be black and white. If you do feel sluggish, you could be proud of yourself for getting up and going for a walk, even if it was only for two minutes.
Empowering statements
Sometimes the head tries to be positive and shush the mind, and it’s okay to do that and put it all to one side to try and be positive. Although that’s great and useful some of the time, it may not be beneficial all of the time. We can end up suppressing what we’re really feeling just to be positive, so it’s really important sometimes to just get it out on paper, or if you find you’re more of a verbal person then talking it out can also really help. So getting down all of those feelings, what you do and don’t want to do with a situation can be a start in action planning how you want to go forward, and you can start to make that happen. If things start to stay in your head too much then they may not happen, so it’s important to combine these beliefs with action.
To work with affirmations, it is best to keep them in the now, so “I am” rather than “I will be”, as “I will be” is always something that you are striving for. Its about empowering statements rather than suppressing feelings.
Meanwhile, you can start to work on journaling the reasons you think you feel like that and if you need to explore it deeper, or if it’s enough for you just to start to change that record you are playing.