Stop the negative spiral
4 tips for positive thoughts
© Natalia Deriabina / Shutterstock
We all know that: sometimes it’s not that easy to get out of a negative spiral of thoughts. We have four tips with which you can work on your mindset and face life more calmly.
For some it is the current events surrounding war and climate change, for others it is very personal issues that dominate their thoughts and make it very difficult for them to stay positive and look optimistically into the future.
Even if you can’t imagine it right now, you can practice thinking positively. With a few tips you can work on your mindset and manage not to get lost in negative spirals of thought, even in difficult times. (Of course, this does not apply to people with mental illnesses, such as depression. In this case, you should talk to your doctor about treatment methods that are right for you.)
4 tips to think positively and cultivate a healthy mindset
1. Identify the negative thoughts you want to change
Before we can change something, we first have to really become aware of it. So listen carefully to what your negative thoughts are trying to tell you. Does your inner critic constantly put you down? Do you keep reliving difficult situations from the past in your mind? Or do you always assume the worst and see negative scenarios in the future that haven’t happened yet (and probably won’t)?
It may help you to write down such thoughts as they arise. This way you can see even more clearly how often you actually make things unnecessarily difficult for yourself.
2. Accept these thoughts as they are
The next important point: the radical acceptance of the current state – and therefore of your thoughts. We often want to get rid of negativity straight away and simply try to push it away. Unfortunately that doesn’t work. Instead, we must first accept and fully accept failures, negative feelings and destructive thoughts.
You can practice this with meditation, for example. In classic mindfulness meditation you do exactly that: accept everything as it is right now. You learn to see your thoughts no longer as the ultimate truth, but as something your mind produces based on what you feed it. And ultimately you have it in your own hands.
3. Change your perspective
Now try to change your perspective when you encounter a negative thought. Instead of thinking, “Shit, I totally messed up the presentation,” you could try something like this: “The presentation didn’t go well. But now I know what to pay special attention to, so I can do it better next time make.”
This takes practice and is anything but easy. But if you continually work to see not just the negative but also the opportunities, you can train this type of positive thinking like a muscle. Repetition is important – you have to make it a habit and keep reminding yourself not to fall into destructive thought patterns straight away.
4. Practice gratitude
A very good way to specifically practice positive thinking is gratitude. If you like, you can keep a gratitude diary in which you collect what you are grateful for every day. Maybe it’s enough to remind yourself of these aspects in the evening before you go to bed. Gratitude is especially important in difficult times so that we don’t lose sight of what we have.
For someone going through a serious life crisis such as war or a serious loss, this is understandably unhelpful. But if we are generally well, have a nice home, enough to eat, perhaps a partner, healthy children, pets and a job, then it can be very helpful to focus on these things instead of us to focus on the negative things in the world or in some areas of our lives.
This way you can cultivate a mindset of openness and positive thinking, in which negative thoughts can of course arise from time to time, but they don’t play the main role. It takes a while to internalize this, but with a little practice it helps a lot to ride the big and small waves of life.
Sources used: healthline.com, yogaeasy.de