Four Steps to Get Rid of Negative Thoughts
Negative thoughts are a thousand times more addictive than drugs. A four step proven approach to help get rid of negative thoughts is presented here. Using this technique you can get rid of negative thoughts and make yourself a happier person.
Negative thoughts are a thousand times more addictive than drugs. Over time they become you so that you cannot distinguish a thought as being separate from you.
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Many mental health professionals and psychiatrists like Professor Aaron Beck of the University of Pennsylvania, who invented the Beck Hopelessness Scale, believe that depression is due to negative views towards the self, world, and especially the future. In his lifelong experience of working with depressed patients, Professor Beck found that they experienced streams of negative thoughts that habitually pop up spontaneously out of nowhere.
Our thoughts, emotions and our behaviour all affect each other. By changing how we view them we can make significant changes to improve our lives. By identifying and evaluating our thoughts we can think more realistically. This makes us feel better and then we do indeed behave more functionally. This improves everyone’s lives.
You can get rid of negative thoughts. There is hope for you. Others have done it, so can you!
There is a priceless and proven technique, which has helped lots of people get rid of negative thoughts that plague the mind. When you learn to get rid of negative thoughts you become a more positive person, who is happier. All the advice you get about “Think positive”, just doesn’t work if you can’t get rid of negative thoughts first. Using the following method you can get rid of much negativity in your life so that you can think positive.
So, here’s the method, step by step.
1. Become Aware
This is the first step. You have to recognise that you’re having a negative thought. The sure sign of a negative thought is that it lowers your energy level. Then it can also make you feel gloomy and bitter so that you can’t see any good in anything.
2. Label It
Take a good look at your thought. “I’m experiencing a negative thought now.” Tell yourself like this. Then you decide that you will not let this negative thought take control of you. Visualize the thought going away from you or going into the ground. Once a day, find a place where you can sit alone quietly for a few minutes. Even a toilet will do if you have no other place. Visualize that you dump your negative thoughts onto a dead tree, a rock or the sea. Tell yourself that you don’t want them anymore.
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After doing this for a few days, you’ll notice a sudden change. Suddenly you’ll begin to feel your energy level stop sinking and the inner gloom will stop getting gloomier. Fantastic progress until now, so congratulate yourself. Treat yourself to a nice cake and then on to the next stage.
3. Exaggerate It
Explore the negative thought and play with it. Stretch it and make it absolutely ridiculous. If you have a thought such as “I can’t go and tell my bank that I’d need to lower my monthly mortgage amount. They’d think I’m a loser”. Visualize all the people at the bank laughing out aloud so they roll on the floor pointing at you. Some of them manage to rush into the street and stop passers-by or get on the phone and call their friends and say out aloud “Can you imagine, we have a customer here who wants to lower her monthly mortgage amount!” Then everyone joins in to ridicule you, the traffic stops, TV cameras appear and they make a breaking-news alert, the president cancels his foreign trip.
As you go on doing this thought stretching, you realize the absurdity of your negative thoughts. They begin to appear bizarre and lose their glue-like grip on you. Congratulations, you have now reached breakthrough point. The miracle has started taking place. You’ve started freeing your mind.
4. Be Thankful
Notice that all your exaggerations did not actually take place. Things could have been far worse for you if they had. This is a reason to be thankful. The moment you start being thankful, a new ray of life enters and your inner gloom lights up. Things start happening to you that never happened before. Where there were only walls for you to bang your head, doors and windows appear. An end of the world disaster turns out to be an opportunity, a new beginning that you’d never have imagined. Now just relax and experience how new things come into your life in place of the old negative thoughts.
Many addiction recovery programs fail because there is no success in replacing drugs, liquor, or porn addiction with something positive and desirable. It is the same with negative thoughts. They become an addiction. So, when you start purging your mind of them, what do you put in their place? Being thankful brings a positive appreciation of your situation and you see yourself as part of a bigger picture.
You don’t have to be religious or expect archangels flapping wings and blowing fiery trumpets by your bedside as wake up in the morning. The perspective and relaxed feeling you get as you start becoming free of negative thoughts allows you to be more receptive and see opportunities. This is what is meant by “Thy will be done” in prayer. You recognize that your personal ego is rather tiny in the big picture. If you try to run everything with this tiny ego, you limit all possibilities to only those your tiny ego can imagine. Life contains infinitely more possibilities than you can imagine. Then, to your surprise, you start attracting positive thoughts.
“A man who bows down to nothing can never bear the burden of himself” – F. Doestoyevsky, in The Possesed. A person, who is full of negative thoughts is stiff, rigid and unbending. A person, who has come to terms with negative thoughts is flexible and pliant. There is more room for joy in this person. Children are like this naturally.
When you’ve gone through these four steps for some time, you’ll notice that life does seem better. Your energy level picks up. New purposes emerge in place of cheerless despair and people start appreciating the new you and your self-confidence starts to build up again.
A star is born. And invariably positive “coincidences” start happening to you!
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User Comments
sinikka sinha
On April 7, 2008 at 11:26 am
Very useful indeed, in fact invaluable. Wish I had heard about this before. Every word is a diamond in its proper place, I can never thank the author enough, you are a life saver
Gian-Carlo Albinoni
On April 12, 2008 at 11:55 am
Good points but I wonder how effective self-help would be in desperate cases.
Rana Sinha
On April 18, 2008 at 2:22 am
Thanks Gian-Carlo Albinoni for your comments. Very important question that you have raised. Even if the situation is not acute we all do need expert help,professional help. In acute cases this help is vital. Though in reality all healing is internal healing, the capacity of people in desperate situations is very impaired and they can’t begin to heal without professional help.
Johanna
On June 12, 2008 at 11:47 am
I will start using these tips now. Seem interesting and might work.
M.G.Selvi, Panneerselvam
On July 1, 2008 at 6:38 am
I read the four steps and I feel it may work well. The third step of exaggerating seems a little frightening, but finally thanking will overcome this step. I will try and tell my two daughters also to follow and see if it helps.THANKS FOR THE HELP
Julie
On August 4, 2008 at 12:59 am
I can see how the exaggeration can be helpful for dealing with negative thoughts, and it’s not one that’s often talked about.
Rana Sinha
On August 7, 2008 at 10:35 am
Thanks to everyone for their comments. The exaggeration brings humour into a very serious state of affairs. When in the grips of negative thoughts, we lose perspective. Humour can bring this perspective back. Being thankful introduces the spiritual dimension. This opens the windows for new positive thoughts to come in and replace the negative ones.
Cindy
On August 14, 2008 at 8:36 pm
These are great tips. Many years ago, I was very sick and the power of having positive thoughts instead of negative ones really helped me heal faster. Instead of feeling sorry for myself I accepted the fact that things happen for a reason, and you can take any situation and make it a better one. I even had my birthday party in my hospital room!
Alexander
On August 28, 2008 at 6:35 am
Great tips. I’ll start practising. We have so much negativity in our office.
Nigel
On September 2, 2008 at 8:39 am
I liked these tips. Will try them. At least they sound sane.
Manas
On September 13, 2008 at 7:28 am
Very good tips. I’ll start using them. We have so much negativity in our lives. Ithink they should teach these skills in schools rather than teaching things like algebra, which I have never needed.
Bug
On October 21, 2008 at 4:26 am
Thankyou so much! I am so grateful that I found this page because it has opened my eyes! When I finished reading this I actually cried for joy because I realised that all my fears were truly absurd!
Thankyou!
Sachin
On January 18, 2009 at 1:01 pm
It is indeed a very useful article . I never thought it will be this this simple to flush out negative thoughts. I had a habbit of finding negatives in each and every thing. This habbit made a complete loser out of me. Hope i will b able to gid read of this habbit.Thanks a ton for this post.
Vijay
On January 29, 2009 at 5:09 am
This article is not a pragmatic one . if one feels negative in mind, these kind of answers won’t make any difference.
Tony
On February 11, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I think reading about how to fix my negative thoughts gets my mind away from negative thinking for a moment. Thanks.
Jay
On April 8, 2009 at 8:12 pm
i think it’s helping a bit now but i wish it would just go away and be myself again…
Michaela
On April 30, 2009 at 2:08 am
I just googled \”How to banish negative thoughts\” and this site was the first listing. Sat here at my computer and put all of these steps to work and what a difference! Believe me after a life time of struggling with my black hole mind this was something that just turned the tide. The humour, riduculing of the \”negative thought\’ cancels its power and replaces it with some light and space. This is a way of making cognitive recognition therapy work effectively.
Thankyou so much!
beau
On June 12, 2009 at 4:34 am
thanks for the tips
stephen
On July 10, 2009 at 11:04 am
i juss want too say thank you this is really goin to help me out
Sandra
On July 11, 2009 at 11:57 pm
ok of course children are happy naturaly becouse they have yet to experience the negative
Center For Eating Disorders
On July 21, 2009 at 10:53 am
Negative thoughts can sometimes feel all-consuming. Finding solutions to this negativity is important, but identifying the causes behind it is equally imperative. Cognitive distortions often perpetuate negativity and depression. These distortions range from “all or nothing” attitudes to overgeneralizations. The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt recently wrote a blog entry on cognitive distortions and ways to conquer them. To learn more, visit http://eatingdisorder.org/blog/2009/07/14/cognitive-distortions-define-discover-disprove/. Let us know what you think!
Puneet G
On August 18, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Hi, It was great reading this article. My negative thoughts have been running my life and it is so true about them draining your energy. I have only recently become aware that I have too many negative thoughts . I hope it is the first step toward somehting positive. I can weave my life around these thoughts , cry for hours and finally ‘wake up’ from these thoughts totally drained. I have started making changes and hope to get over them . I don’t know how long it takes.
vijay
On August 23, 2009 at 3:46 am
I thank Google first because this is the first page i got when i entered “how to come out of negative thoughts” and of course thanks a lot for these simple but effective steps to come out of negative thoughts.I realize that negative thoughts will not just go out in few seconds as you practice these steps but i believe it is possible to drain out the thoughts.
Agnel
On November 3, 2009 at 8:44 am
Super cool.. tips…. belive in it .. will work for sure
chris
On November 16, 2009 at 3:40 pm
amazing…
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