Our thoughts control our reality. They influence how we feel, how we act, and vice versa in a big feedback loop. This is why it’s important to internalize the following: you are not your negative thoughts. Anxious and depressive thoughts create an unreliable narrator that filter your world view through negativity. They make you view every struggle as an injustice, and failure as a negative indictment on your worth, when much of it is just part of the natural journey towards growth and success. You are not inherently bad and the world is not out to get you. Negative thoughts are responses to an emotional situation but mindful techniques help you detach yourself from these negative thoughts and stop the downward spiral when our minds jump to untrue conclusions.
Learning to acknowledge our negative thoughts as just thoughts and not reality, is a pivotal step towards reaching a healthier mindset. From there you can work on replacing these thoughts and instead treating yourself with the kindness you’d treat a friend. Our thoughts control every aspect of our lives. If we think negatively, we project those negative beliefs thereby, creating a ‘negative feedback loop.’ You think negative, so your actions are negative, the consequences are negative and that serves as confirmation for your negative thoughts. Break out of them by challenging yourself to conquer a scary feat – each time you will build this muscle as confirmation to go after more challenging things in the future.
Here are some tangible steps that you can take next time you start feeling overwhelmed by negative thoughts that don’t actually reflect reality.
- Acknowledge your thoughts as just thoughts, not reality. Anxiety and depression are unreliable narrators. Remember how many times you have felt this way before and discredit these thoughts. Let them leave your mind. Remember, thoughts are not always reality.
- Write it out. If you feel overwhelmed by the need to express yourself, write down what sparked these thoughts and what you wish you could change. Venting helps with getting these thoughts out of your mind and leaves you with the ability to focus on other things instead. You can focus on solutions to whatever situation or problem sparked those negative thoughts.
- Look at the facts and recall times when you’ve made incorrect assumptions. Are your negative thoughts actually objective truth or just an emotional response to a situation? Give yourself time to cool off and analyze the situation more objectively. Think back to times when your mind has incorrectly jumped to conclusions and you looked back and thought about how you started doom-thinking for nothing. Our minds can quickly turn into our worst enemies without mindfulness about the kinds of thoughts we allow to control our lives.
- Detach your self-worth from external validation or achievement. Self-worth is inherent. Failures can often cause us to spiral into a pit of negative thoughts. But every struggle is not an injustice and challenge is not a negative indictment on your self-worth. In reality, the world is not out to get you, you are autonomous and your problems are not uniquely egregious. Failure it’s part of the unpaved journey towards success. You must learn from that failure and persevere anyway instead of digging a bigger hole. We can do this by detaching our self-worth from achievement or external validation.
- Anchor your purpose in a positive external pursuit. Make a plan for your goals and use discipline and resilience to build a self you can feel proud of. By focusing on things like helping others, volunteering, studying to become a nurse and heal others, or create anything that can better anyone’s life, you can step outside the warped inner-focused perspective negative thoughts create. Stepping outside your own perspective is key to breaking through negative thoughts.
- Create a better environment for your brain by focusing on what you can control and challenge these negative thoughts. Change what you can’t accept and accept what you can’t change. Taking responsibility over decisions changes circumstances. Take one action to prove your negative thoughts wrong. From there you can gain the confidence to keep growing and taking bigger leaps towards your goals.
- Treat yourself with the kindness you’d treat a friend. Treat yourself with the compassion, tenderderness, and encouragement you’d treat a loved one. Reject the negative unreliable narrator inside of you.
You are not your negative thoughts. Often our circumstances can create a haze of negativity that seems difficult to break out from. While you may not be to blame for circumstances, you are responsible for your decisions. Responsible for what you can control, for your decisions, for not digging a deeper hole. You’re responsible for steaming full-force ahead towards your lofty goals no matter how out of reach they may seem through the haze of a dark moment. Because your goals are not unreachable, your temporary circumstances have just created a negative lens which you see life through — but it’s not reality. People have risen far above their beginnings and adversity time and time again. It’s about flipping that perspective switch and letting failure demotivate you.
Don’t let negative thoughts victimize you. Challenge them. Victim complexes make you view every struggle as an injustice, and challenge as a failure. In reality, the world is not out to get you, you are autonomous and your problems are not uniquely egregious. Failure doesn’t mean the world is out to get you, it’s part of the unpaved journey towards success. You must learn from that failure and persevere anyway instead of digging a bigger hole. Go forth, and grab life by the horns, embracing the flaws of the present. Don’t let problems overwhelm you to the point where you can’t make small changes. No one will do for you what you won’t do for yourself.
“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.
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