2 Important Things To Know About Negative Thoughts

Ahhh, negative thoughts - don’t you love them?

Not!!!

They can be so relentless. No matter how hard you try to overcome them, they persist.

I’ve spent countless hours over my life struggling with these little suckers. They have no respect of time, place or circumstance for when they emerge and the havoc they can wreak can be devastating if we give into them.

Have you ever taken the time to observe your negative thoughts? If you do, you’ll most likely notice that most of them arise from:

1. Obsession over the past

2. Constant worry about the future.

Start to pay attention to your thoughts. If you find your thoughts are beating you up for something you did or didn’t do, you’re living in the past.

If you find yourself constantly worrying about how you’re going to pay your rent, mortgage or phone bills - you’re living in the future.

The deal with these negative thought patterns is that they steal our focus away from the present moment. When we get too caught up in them, we can lose track of our life. You may also end up losing connection with the people in your life and the world in which you live.

In order to begin living in the present, we need to divert our attention from our negative thoughts and direct our attention to the world around us. We can do this through a variety of ways. In fact, any activity we engage in, we can practice bringing our thoughts to the present moment.

One easy way is to focus on your senses.

In any moment, and especially when we find ourselves caught up in thoughts about the past or future, we can bring our attention to something we can see, hear, touch, taste or smell. For example, you realise you’re caught up in thoughts about a conversation you had with someone and it’s bringing up negative emotions. Bring your attention back to the present by observing 3-5 things you can see in your immediate environment, such as:

“I can see a chair, a clock, a kettle, coffee cups and a fridge.” Do the same for 3-5 things you can hear - “I can hear a clock ticking, I can hear the wind outside, I can hear the neighbour’s dog, I can hear my breathing, I can hear my fingernails tapping on the bench.”

Keep going until you’ve identified 3-5 things for each sense. Before you realise what’s happened, you’ve stopped replaying events from the past and you’re in the present identifying something you can smell or hear.

You can do this exercise as many times as you want as a way to bring your focus back to the present moment. Like anything new, it takes repetitive practice to become fluent but if you do so, I can assure you that you will experience a greater sense of calm and awareness of yourself and your surroundings, which will help ground you when plagued with difficult thoughts.

Start experimenting and see what you notice :)