The Power of Positive Thinking... Not!
When you catch yourself thinking negatively, do you force yourself to think positively? Do you try to distract yourself when negative thoughts enter your mind? Do you believe that anything is possible? Do you find people that are always positive...a pain in the neck?
It is natural for humans to think negatively. Our survival depends on it. We have to think negatively even to keep an umbrella in the boot. We also don't have control of the thoughts that enter our minds. I don't know about you, but I have plenty of negative thoughts during the day. Even when I am speaking at a conference, I occasionally think about what can go wrong. I certainly carry extra batteries, pens and two remote devices for a projector. These negative thoughts are useful. I suspect that people who thought negatively thousands of years ago lived longer. If you heard a rustle of leaves outside your hut you would have had a better change of survival if you thought it was danger and got ready. The positive thinker would have thought 'It's only the wind" and have gone back to sleep.
So, we all have negative thoughts and they are helpful to our survival. Being prepared for the worst situation is clever. Risk management is necessary.
Burt what happens if you are always thinking negatively. What happens if you become a true pessimist? Not so good. You take a situation and make it worse. You are ill while on holiday and you dwell on the lost opportunities for enjoyment and renewal.
Some where in the middle is the answer. Your options seem to be - force yourself to think positively when visited by negative thoughts, distract yourself when they arrive uninvited or ignore them.
If you were swimming near a blue ringed octopus, would you touch it, chase it away, ignore it or simply observe it. All options are available. The first two are asking for trouble. Same for negative thoughts. Engage and dwell on them and feel worse. Expend energy forcing yourself to think positive thoughts to counter the negative ones. Think of something else to distract yourself or...recognise that this is merely a thought. "Isn't it interesting that this thought keeps coming back..." Once you recognise this as a thought and not reality, your body won't react with a chemical cocktail. The thought will simply drift away. No chemicals to dissipate.
So an energy efficient way of dealing with negative thoughts is to to simply recognise them as thoughts and let them move on. Make room for them to exist but don't engage them in conversation. Let them drift or swim by like the blue ringed octopus. I remember reading that the funnel web spider is nearly blind and deaf and can only sense something big and heavy approaching. Of course, it attacks to survive because it knows that something big is approaching. Don't approach it and it won't attack. Observe it from a distance and it looks fascinating as does the blue ringed octopus. Observe your thoughts in the same way. Approach them with interest rather than anger or fear. 'Isn't it interesting that the thought of fainting comes when I approach the microphone'.
Can you remember occasions when engaging in negative thoughts got you really scared. Waiting to go into the dentist's room, feeling your aeroplane drop a little, wondering if you pressed 'reply to all' instead of 'reply', feeling a pain in the chest.
I have tried dwelling on all of these and got myself scared. I have also tried observing them as mere thoughts and not got a reaction.
So instead of positive thinking, observe your negative thoughts and label them as thoughts, not reality. One catch, you will need to do the same for positive thoughts. They are also only thoughts too. The alternative to both is to observe, accept and enjoy what is happening without an internal commentary or judgment.
If chanting positive mantras worked, you wouldn't be reading this newsletter. Chanting 'I'm a winner, doesn't make you a winner'. Even your brain knows that.
Try it for one day. Just observe. When the thoughts come, let them go and quietly relax back into observing. Even if you are speaking to an audience in this observing mode, you will still be able to speak perhaps even better when you are distracted by negative or positive thoughts.
I would love to hear how you go.
regards
Paddy Spruce
