Four Tips To Help Tame Your Negative Thoughts
Why is it that when life is good, we sometimes find ourselves focusing on the negatives? As if the good things are somehow too good to be real and aren’t going to last? While there’s nothing wrong with doing self check-ins to tackle potential problems in the future, we’re not talking about practical thoughts. We’re talking pervasive, persistent thoughts that turn a sunny day stormy.
Even as a coach who helps other people thrive, I still have these thoughts so I know they suck. So how do I manage them? First, I identify what they are. Simply put, we can chalk them up to three things:
- They interrupt our flow, even when we’re doing something that has nothing to do with the thought.
- Even if we can explain it away, our brains keep bringing it up, convincing us it needs to be addressed NOW.
- They evoke sadness, fear, and panic, even if the thought isn’t actually true or real.
Understanding what these thoughts are and the way they make us feel is an important step I like to call “name it to tame it” — you identify those worries so you can separate them as unique entities from yourself and work to tackle them. Now that we’ve named them, we need the tools to combat them. That’s why I’ve put together four techniques to help sort the worries that should be stressed from the ones that you can crush. By conquering these, you will be fully in control of your head, just as you ought to be.
1. Rate Your Stressors
When worrying about something, instead of asking “Is this worrisome outcome possible?” ask: “Is it probable?” Anything might be possible, but something that’s probable is a lot more likely to happen. By doing this, you separate the thoughts you can put away from the ones that require immediate action. What I recommend is rating these thoughts on a scale from 1–10: 1 being forget about it and 10 being a red alert, take action ASAP.
2. Make a Plan to Take Action (if the situation calls for it)
Sometimes, worry is actually a good thing! It reminds us when we need to take care of something. So when we rate a stressor and find out it’s a good thing that we’re worried about it, it’s crucial to come up with a plan so it’s taken off of our minds. Instead of worrying and ruminating over something, we can use our energy to make an action plan and get out of our own head. My rule of thumb is: do the worst thing first. I guarantee you’ll feel more capable of tackling everything else in your day. Feel like you’re having a panic attack and can’t move forward? Try this simple tip that will literally change your physiology.
Something worth noting too: sometimes our worries are motivated more by our mood than the situation. So if you’re hungry, or tired, or upset, these are all things that you can take action for as well. If you eat a full meal and return to your problem, you’re in a much better state to assess the importance of the problem that worries you.
3. Learn to Let Go
A lot of the worrying we have, particularly about our mistakes and mistakes in relationships, is because we don’t trust our instincts. We don’t trust our instincts because of prior conditioning that has us questioning ourselves and not recognizing that it’s okay to want what we want. If we recognize what we want and think that’s okay, suddenly our worries begin to lose their hold on us. In addition to recognizing that it’s okay to have our thoughts, there are some actions that we can take to help ourselves in letting go. One thing that I love to do, for example, is declutter my physical space, because research shows that a cleaner living/working space leads to more organized thoughts.
4. Master Your Mind
We have to recognize that the way we articulate our thoughts has a strong and definitive impact on our feelings and actions. If I say “I can’t,” I’ll probably fail and get really upset about it. But if I say, “I can’t… yet,” I accept that I’m still learning and will one day be able to say with confidence that, “I can.” When we talk to ourselves in a positive manner and not reflect on our “perceived” flaws, we build ourselves up rather than knock ourselves down. This transition from destructive to constructive self-reflection is all it takes to go from a worrier to a warrior.
When we recognize why our thoughts make us worry, we eventually realize that the threats we imagine exist only in our minds. It’s a great bother to our daily lives to work and play with these kinds of things weighing us down, so even if our anxiety is only a figment of our imagination, it still feels real to us. By mastering these techniques, we have the tools we need to tame whatever our brain throws at us and enjoy each moment to the fullest.
Let me know your comments, questions, concerns below, or hit us up on social media @psyfinyc for more tips like these!
