Does your mind sometimes drive you to distraction? How often do you catch yourself worrying, imagining negative outcomes or getting upset when what you want is not happening. Discover how mind awareness can help you to stop negative thinking.
Maybe you are good and catching your negative thoughts. But when you catch yourself, do you stop negative thinking? Or, do you just pick up where you left off on the downward spiral of worry, fear and negative mind talk? I don’t really like the term negative thinking. It sounds heavy and judgmental. But I know I can feel pretty heavy when I start worrying or judging reality.
So what to do? First of all, congratulate yourself, because if you’re reading this article you have probably moved, for the most part, out of the first stage of mind awareness.
Here are the first three stages of mind awareness:
The first stage of mind awareness is thinking that you are your mind. Your life is experienced through your mind. You don’t try to change your mind because you don’t perceive that there’s anything to change.
The second stage of mind awareness is when you begin to observe your mind. You catch yourself thinking a negative thought.
The third stage of mind awareness is when you try to change your negative thinking often by practicing the opposite — positive thinking. Unfortunately, positive thinking doesn’t always work or works for a few minutes, before the mind will often slide back into negative thinking, especially if that has become its default pattern.
Positive thinking and negative thinking are two sides of the same coin. However much you try to change your thinking, your mind keeps on doing what it is most familiar with. As a result, you keep trying to change the way you think, but your life experience doesn’t change in the way you want it to.
In my experience, the most powerful approach you can take to stop negative thinking is when you stop losing yourself in your mind’s stories and stop wrestling with your mind or trying to change it. Instead you become more interested in your innate wisdom and wholeness. You decide that you want to experience your fullness and greatness rather than your smallness.
When the ego or “small self mind” has lost its audience, it starts to diminish.
If you catch your mind thinking small, simply drop into yourself more fully so that you can hear your inner wisdom mind again.Take a deep breath, sit still for a few moments and meditate or simply breathe, allowing your mind to become calm and present.
Ready to upgrade the quality of your life and feel happier? Turn on the switch inside yourself first.
Nicola Walker is an Anything is Possible mindset coach, with over 25 years of combined life coaching and hypnotherapy experience. She guides people at a turning point in life, to navigate and fulfill their dreams and deepest desires.
Nicola is the author of the forthcoming book, Joy in the Middle of the Mess: An Evolutionary Adventure on the Quest for Success. One of her greatest joys is to walk and hike in the hills and along the beautiful California beaches, near her home in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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