10+ Unusual Ways To Clear Your Mind From Negative Thoughts And Achieve Your Goals!
10+ Unusual Ways To Clear Your Mind From Negative Thoughts And Achieve Your Goals!
Do you spend most of the time in your head, creating negative scenarios, catastrophizing, and fearing things could go wrong? Overthinking and fearing that you can’t achieve your dreams, if something suddenly goes wrong? If it sounds like you, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Have you ever thought about how constant self-sabotage and negative thinking lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy – your belief about what will happen drives the actions that make that outcome ultimately come to pass? And therefore, you and your goals suffer the most?
Negative thinking is one of the most common behaviors we are all prone to. Some studies show that we think up to 60,000 thoughts a day. Unbelievable, right? How many of them do you think are negative? Are they predominant?
What follows is a crippling chain reaction that, a spiraling effect, with each subsequent bad thought, sends your mind into a deeper spiral of depression and eventual virtual combustion, rendering you helpless in its wake. If that attitude is overwhelmingly negative, it can have an effect on a variety of things, including family, work, and health. The list goes on…
But, hey if you think there’s no way out, stay with me for a second…
Since I was a teenager, I always tended to think of negative scenarios, random „What if…“ pop-up thoughts, that became so regular it started interrupting my daily routine, impacting my mood, and productivity, slowly leading me to depression.
What I want to say is never disregard, and sit still when it comes to your negative thoughts. Everything is solvable if you’re willing to work on yourself and be a little bit more self-loving.
The advice that follows will not only help you stop worrying all the time, but it will also assist you in finding solutions to any issues you may be having with navigating control. I’ve been using these techniques for almost 3 years now, and let me tell you, they changed the game.
I won’t promise you immediate results, not even that it’ll be 100% solved. We are all different and differently react to things. But, you have to try multiple things in order to find what works best for you.
Here we go!
1. don’t beat yourself up for having negative thoughts
First of all, if you tend to beat yourself up because you’re having negative thoughts, please stop. Rather than scolding yourself because of it, understand why they even come in the first place. What’s their root cause? The trigger.
Automatic thoughts are negative self-talk that arises instantly in reaction to a trigger without us even being conscious of thinking it. They frequently affect our mental health and are unreasonable.
They are frequently connected to our personal experiences. Moreover, they stem from our worries and unforgettable, indelible experiences we’ve absorbed throughout the years and can’t seem to get rid of.
One thing that really helped me with this, is journaling.
Numerous types of journaling have been demonstrated in studies to improve memory, lower signs of anxiety and despair, and even strengthen the immune system. Additionally, it boosts your creativity and gives you the ability to sleep peacefully at night since you will have begun to understand the causes and implications of some of your biggest worries.
One of the most beautiful and valuable things journaling has given me is understanding my inner self, my shadows, and why I am the way I am. Why do I react the way I do sometimes… When you acknowledge your behaviors, you are more likely to come up with a solution to them.
- What causes me to have negative thoughts? (events, people, phrases, and subjects)
- Can I identify how my negative thoughts, such as worry or overload, contribute to my overall mental health?
- Are these negative emotions really mine, or are they instead the result of pressure from others in my life, community, or society?
- Do I actually benefit from having these bad thoughts?
- Do I believe those negative thoughts?
Read here: 40 Powerful Journaling Prompts For Anxiety To Try If You Worry Too Much!
2. it’s crucial to what kind of mindset you start the day
What is your first thought when you wake up? Is it „ Uf I have a lot of work to do today! I don’t know how I’m gonna manage all of it!“ or „It’s such bad weather today, I hate the rain“ – sounds like a normal complaining sentence, but do you really want to start your day like that?
If you tend to do this, you’re consciously setting the tone of your day for low concentration, stress, anxiety, low mood, and therefore negative thinking. What you say to yourself matters more than you think.
Do you think it would be so much better if the first thought of your day is gratitude, a little prayer? Just seemingly insignificant things can make the day so much more enjoyable and special.
For example „I’m so grateful for this beautiful weather outside, mother nature is truly astonishing“; „I’m so grateful for this cozy bed that I sleep in“; „I’m so grateful that I have food to eat and water to drink right when I wake up, some people don’t have that.“
It’s truly just the little things that we don’t think are important that much because we have gotten used to having them.
Gratitude gives us a way to embrace everything that contributes to the uniqueness of our life. No matter how stressful and anxious you may feel – the best way to ease it is to remember how much you are lucky.
3. don’t Overindulge into too much drama and social media
Don’t get me wrong. Being informed about the daily worldwide news is valuable to some degree, but the problems arise when we tend to overindulge ourselves into what’s happening out there, rather than focusing on bettering ourselves.
As we said we need to first acknowledge, and understand the root cause of our negative thinking suffering, this may be one of them. Nowadays, you can always hear people grumbling, becoming upset, and discussing the most recent events happening worldwide. As a result, you are always surrounded by this negative energy.
Little by little, you start to fear certain things happening (from what you heard), or you just become so discouraged, and overwhelmed with negativity from people around you, that you become that way too.
You know what they say „You are the product of the 5 people you spend the most time with“. when you think of it it really does make sense.
I always tell myself, sometimes is better if I don’t know exactly what’s happening on social media, what my friends or strangers I follow are up to, and where they’re traveling (there you go – self-comparison, FOMO).
Unplug. Dedicate some time to yourself. Life is so much more than social media. You’ll be okay if you don’t know every single detail that will make you overthink.
4. never avoid negative thoughts – what you avoid always seem to chase you more
What you resist will persist. Does that sound familiar?
We end up being even more entangled in discomfort anytime we attempt to suppress what we’re feeling or push it away. To something that is already excruciating, we add still another level of misery.
Whenever I tried to avoid negative thinking I’d say “Okay, what’s that complicated, I’m just not gonna think about them, easy job!” Ha, sure it is! Of course, they kept on bothering and chasing me even more that time.
5. you need to first feel it so you could heal it
You may already have heard the phrase „Feel it to heal it“, and „Through is the only way out“, but you never really understood what it means, right?
Negative thoughts frequently serve as a catalyst for exploring a repressed emotion, such as grief, fear, or rage. Find out where you are physically hanging onto these feelings by tuning into your body.
Allow yourself to feel them. Don’t you think that when you have the courage to feel what you fear, the intimidating feelings will start to seem less terrifying? And, if you keep running away and refuse to face them, you’ll only deepen the fear more. You’ll always feel on the edge, fearing to get face to face with it.
The majority of efforts people make to stop experiencing emotional distress have a reverse effect. They suffer more as a result of their efforts to minimize or suppress the emotion.
“Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal.”
~Vironika Tugaleva
6. understand that you’re not your thoughts, you’re just an observer of them
You’re not your thoughts, you’re just the observer of them.
It’s simple to get sucked into the stories you tell yourself in your head when you’re deep in thinking. Since your thoughts are happening inside your head, you might come to think of yourself as your thoughts.
But, if you declare, “I am not my thoughts.” You just took a step forward in the direction of a positive outlook on life. If you repeat it enough times, you’ll start believing it.
Whatever thoughts you have, you decide how you’re going to react to them.
Have you ever thought about this? When you think beautiful, positive thoughts you naturally want them to stay. They make you feel good – they refer to the term „positive“ and your conscious (subconscious) mind loves it. It’s learned that it triggers positive emotions. Oppositely, when something negative pops up, you tend to push it away. Why? They’re identified as something bad, and therefore causing negative emotions. You choose to let the positive ones stay and tend to react – push out negative ones.
These negative, intrusive thoughts most probably come from our subconscious mind and underlying, buried fears as a trauma response. The active mind’s thoughts are the byproducts of a mind shaped by external factors and emotional responses.
The truth lies within you. You can let those negative, intrusive thoughts majorly affect you or you can take the things in your hand and regain control.
Just keep reading, you’ll understand what I mean by this.
7. Mindfulness can help a lot!
Mindfulness involves the practice of distancing yourself from your ideas and emotions so that you may examine them objectively.
The key point here is to not get too invested in them, simply just let them pass through us while being indifferent to them. Observe them, notice them, but be indifferent to them.
Thoughts pass through you like a radio sending out a signal at a certain frequency. Although you are the signal’s receiver, you are not the signal.
Also, look at your thoughts as clouds. They come and they go. It’s just temporary bad weather, but it doesn’t mean it’ll last forever. You can either choose to believe those thoughts or not, every time they pop up.
Choose not to believe them. As simple as that. No matter how ridiculously cliche it sounds, it’s your decision to make. Our pain and misery are not solely the result of our thoughts. We trip up when we identify with them and affix ourselves to them.
8. …or You can try the „punching technique“
Don’t worry we’re not going to punch and fight anyone here except our own thoughts!
Most of the time negative thoughts can feel like a literal invasion, entering your energetic field and long-windedly blathering nonsense. I guess you agree. And we just have no idea how to stop them.
The technique that worked miraculously for me I accidentally discovered and hasn’t just helped me push away all the intrusive, negative thoughts, but also empower and remind me of my own power. My mind’s power.
This „Punching technique“ basically means that whenever you find yourself start being invaded by intrusive, negative thoughts just imagine a positive energetic white circle of protection around your whole body, and picture those meddlesome thoughts trying to enter your energetic field, but they just can’t.
They get punched away and lose it’s strength!
They always get pushed miles away the second they come closer to you and your aura. Why? Because you are a powerful spiritual being, and you are much more mighty and robust than those stupid, irrelevant thoughts.
Just imagine them ashamedly and powerlessly flying miles away from you, and even if they decide to come back and try again, you know you’re able to push them back again.
You play the powerful role here, not them!
9. They are so small, look how big YOU are!
Also, think of it like this. How big are your thoughts actually, compared to you? Do you think they’re bigger? Why do you look at them as a living being at all?
Don’t you think they’d be better defined as rainy clouds passing by? Something trivial, untouchable, and therefore insignificant?
Thinking this way doesn’t just help alienate the negative thoughts but also reminds you of the endless power of your mind and your dominance!
When you raise those bars of positivity and mentality of „You can try and invade how much you want, but I’ll always be more powerful, and you’ll always lose“ then you truly, eventually start feeling that way. No matter how silly it sounds, we sometimes need that silliness to regain dominance in our own lives.
10. try my „tennis thoughts technique“ for negative thoughts
Another technique that works wonders for me is the „tennis thoughts technique“ for negative, intrusive thoughts. You’re probably now thinking „Wtf is this now?“. Punching technique, and now this?! But, hey, hold on real quick…
This technique includes imagining your negative, intrusive thoughts as a tennis ball and yourself as a tennis player. Every time a ball heads back in your direction you reflexively punch it back to your opponent, right? You have control over whether you are going to hit the ball and let it fly meters away from you or you’re going to let it punch you.
How I do it and how you could do it is to imagine putting your negative thoughts into the ball and playing tennis with the wall.
Thoughts are in the ball, not in you or around you. Now they’re as small as the tennis ball, and can’t get out. You have full control over the ball (your thoughts) and instead of them playing with you, you play with them. Once you feel the empowerment from the control, imagine hitting the ball so hard that it goes flying miles away from you. That’s all the philosophy.
I know it sounds silly, but try it a couple of times, you have nothing to lose.
11. neutralize your thoughts and look at them as people walking by while you’re sitting on the bench
Another technique I’ve found to be vastly efficacious is neutralizing your thoughts that suddenly pop up, consciously choosing not to believe them, and labeling them as people walking by while you’re sitting on a park bench.
You and those strangers have completely different lives, and live in an entirely different reality, with different beliefs and opinions. You’re not the same.
How I love to do it to make it look more like my actual bothering thoughts is to imagine those thoughts as loud, annoying kids running around the park while you’re sitting on the bench. They’re just passing by with their parents, being loud, yelling cutely at each other. But, would you get up and start yelling at them too and tell them to stop? Of course, no. You know they’re just passing by and soon will be out of your sight.
Again, all of this may sound a little bit counterintuitive when it comes to your thoughts. You may think and feel the inner need to control, and never allow negative thoughts to enter your field. But, as we generally know from life – most of the time, what we resist, always seems to persist. So, allow them, and you’ll notice them going away.
12. we are who we choose to be in the present moment
What puts us the the „stuck“ mode, the rabbit hole is how we tend to continuously identify ourselves as „negative thinkers“.
How many times have you cluelessly complained to someone close to you during a conversation „I always tend to catastrophize things, that’s what I always do!“ or it doesn’t have to be related to negative thinking patterns at all.
You just said that you always do it. You made peace with it. Do you actually want it? No!
You simply just tend to gravitate towards completely identifying yourself as your dominant behavior. No matter if it’s positive or negative. For example: „I’m such a terrible cooker/I’m terrible at making friends/I always mess things up“.
But, you don’t want that. You want to be an exceptional cooker! But, you surely can’t become one if you continuously tell yourself and others that you’re a bad cooker.
Continuously repeating these affirmations is forming you into a brand new person you choose to be with agreeing with these statements. And funnily, those maybe not true at all. Perhaps your one dessert didn’t taste well, and you automatically labeled yourself as a bad cooker, not giving yourself the chance and space to explore and improve. Why would you be so hard on yourself?
You block your skills and knowledge in that way, not even knowing the potential you have!
what you need to do instead…
Keep telling yourself every day similar affirmations related to the thing you’re trying to do, something like this:
- “C’mon it was just 1 unsuccessful try, I wasn’t born knowing it all perfectly. I’ll try again, and surely be must better!”
- “I have so much potential and hidden talent, it’s only in my head. I can do it!”
- “I am capable of anything I put my mind to”
You need to know that without staying persistent you won’t achieve much. That applies to everything in life as well as overcoming negative thoughts and developing a more positive mindset. Explore even more and try whatever you think would work.
Need help with similar topics? Explore 365 Positive Affirmations For Success, Confidence, And Well-Being That Will Help You Live Your Best Life!
DISCLAIMER! I do not own the photos on this post. Special thanks to https://kaboompics.com/ for the beautiful photos!
