How to change negative thinking to positive. Why is it difficult to change?

Mahatma Gandhi once said one very wise phrase:

“Man is a product of his own thinking. He becomes a reflection of his own thoughts."

You can’t argue with this statement, since our thoughts really determine the style of our life.

But how can you think positively if in the world every now and then there are some kind of disasters, pandemics, wars and other unpleasant events that we hear about every day from TV screens, read on the Internet and print media? Do you really need to turn into an insensitive and heartless cynic?

Many people, trying to get rid of the negative thoughts that visit their heads, do not always realize that a positively thinking person is not a frivolous and flighty optimist or an always joyful and happy person who doesn’t give a damn. Positive people understand perfectly well that they do not live in a fairy tale, and the reality around them is far from a paradise.

A person who knows how to think positively considers all the difficulties that arise on his life path through the prism of possibilities. Trying to solve another problem, such a person will first look at the situation from different angles, and then, using creative approaches and controlling thinking with his own willpower, he will begin to look for the most optimal solution!

Learning to think positively is not that difficult. You just need to change your attitude towards the events happening in life. How to do it? Now we'll tell you!

Characteristics of a person with positive thinking

How to think positively? Some individuals see only good in everything that surrounds them. Such a person who thinks positively has the following characteristics.

• Looks for advantages in everything.
• Interested in new information as an additional opportunity.
• Improves life, creates plans and ideas, works hard for his goal.
• Treats people neutrally or well.
• Observes successful ones in order to take into account their experience.
• Calmly regards achievements and considers why this is possible.
• Has generosity in emotional and material terms.

How to change yourself? It should be concluded that successes arise as a result of the hard work of people with positive thinking.

Develop a proper sleep cycle for yourself

Negative thinking is a symptom of depression, and it is often made worse by lack of sleep or irregular sleep cycles. The connection between negativity, depression and sleep disturbances has been studied in many studies. For example, in 2005, American researchers found that patients with depression or anxiety tended to sleep less than six hours each night.

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To negate your negativity, make sure you get plenty of rest. You should definitely develop a healthy and consistent sleep cycle for yourself. This will help you achieve eight hours of sleep every day, thereby creating a routine that helps you get up for work every morning.

Negative thinking methods and how to avoid them

There are several ways of thinking that lead to bad results. But options have also been developed with which it is possible to avoid negative consequences and get out of a difficult situation. The principle is to change your usual way of thinking, perceiving life within yourself. Without this, it is impossible to achieve success, and subsequently independence. You can make the following list of situations and tips for improving them, how to turn your life towards the positive.

1. Getting used to adhering to clear boundaries, a person does not think about whether this makes sense. It should be realized that in addition to the established rules, there are a great many possibilities and options for action. When building your thinking and life, you need to try to make decisions on your own, which is often much more pleasant than following advice. At the same time, the ability to make the right choice does not come immediately. Given the many daily situations that require decision making, the following questions need to be considered: a) What will be the consequences? b) Will this lead to the satisfaction of the person himself and his environment?
2. If the answers to both questions are affirmative, it is quite possible to make this choice. This way we will gain a small amount of independence, as well as the awareness of our independence and the absence of anyone else's pressure.
3. Changing your mindset to achieve success includes the rule: you should not try to look for problems where there are none. Some people start conflicts out of the blue instead of simply resolving the situation. A lot of negative emotions appear, which affects the rest of the day. Sometimes a person creates a bad condition for himself
4. How to change your attitude towards life? Chinese wisdom advises not to focus on problems that cannot be solved. And if it’s still possible, then there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. The way out of such a situation is to avoid the conflict and refrain from stupid actions associated with it. Another method to improve your life is to not be the source of such quarrels.
5. The absence of fears associated with change helps you achieve success quickly. A new path can be started with a small step. According to Mark Twain, after 2 decades, people regret more about what they didn’t do than about their actions.
6. Change your thinking, but how? Its scope should be expanded. Positive thoughts: If there are problems today, everything can change tomorrow.
7. How to change your lifestyle? There is no need to stop learning, as new knowledge opens up opportunities to achieve goals and makes the process more efficient.
8. How to change your mindset and think positively? It is necessary to eliminate bad qualities in yourself such as envy. If you learn to look positively at other people's successes, they will be perceived as a motivating stimulus. Using other people's accomplishments as role models can help you avoid judgment that leads to problems. And also change lives.
9. The process of brain functioning and the reproduction of thoughts takes quite a lot of time. The more often we resort to it, the more obstacles appear. You can try to choose one of the options rather than endlessly go through and invent situations. You need to change your mind: think less, instead take decisive action. A person must control his thoughts, and not vice versa.

When taking steps that will change your thinking to a positive one, we start with the same thought. By controlling emotions, you should protect not only yourself, but also your neighbors from negativity. And also not to enter into conflicts (not to be their initiator). Changes will occur not only with thinking, but also with consciousness. And then it will become clear from the surrounding world that life has changed.

Act on facts, not assumptions

Negative thinking makes you unable to cope with any kind of uncertainty. Therefore, when you find yourself in a stressful or unfamiliar situation that has a potentially negative outcome, you begin to second-guess events and try to solve the problem without considering any relevant facts. This can be described as mind reading, which is likely to contribute to further negativity.

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This problem can be easily solved by changing behavior. The first step is to gather the facts and details surrounding the situation and use them to make an informed decision. You should start with the scenario and list all the logical explanations in order of importance. Use pen and paper or verbal reflection. For example, if your friend did not respond to a message instantly, there could be many reasons for this. His battery might be low, he might have a meeting at work, or his phone might be on silent and the message simply wasn't read.

By listing these realistic explanations, you can avoid the temptation to identify negative outcomes and react impulsively. Over time, experience will also teach you that logical and reasonable explanations are always more likely than the worst-case scenarios that appear in your head.

Changing thinking

Often our way of thinking is stereotypical, and bias can make a person a failure. When you change your thinking, life becomes completely different. By perceiving internal (subjective) reality, the world of our ordinary thoughts, we distort the external world. It turns out to be illusory or invented. At the same time, emotions and feelings are distorted. This makes the person inappropriate or even unhappy, which can lead to inappropriate behavior. Failures follow in the spheres of life and activity. How to change your thinking and attitude towards life?

Using the method of changing thinking, we come from irrational to rational perception, using the technique of objective refutation. This ensures a self-sufficient life. In the question of how to think positively, you can also use the technology of emotional experience. But the first method is more suitable for people who want to avoid depression. Following the adoption of a different way of thinking, life can change.

For the same purpose, there is a method of alternative interpretation that changes “automatic” thoughts. To change his life, a person applies a method according to the following principles.

1. Priority allows you to pay more attention to first impressions of events. This perception is not always the best, since people often behave impulsively and follow their intuition. As a result, late assessments lead poorly to objectivity, which is not entirely consistent with the circumstances. People are being misled. How to change yourself? We conclude that it is necessary to refrain from hasty assessments. It is necessary to obtain more information for an accurate perception.
2. How to change your thinking and lifestyle? While working on your thoughts on your own, you can try to write down unpleasant emotions throughout the week. It is also necessary to note the event that activates them, and the first thought about it. Over the next week, as you continue to take notes, you need to come up with a number of interpretations—alternatives for the situations. Continuing to act in this way, we replace irrational thinking with objective thinking. Within a month, you can learn to think like this automatically and rebuild your lifestyle for the better.

Questioning your thoughts

Another important part of cognitive restructuring is learning how to question thoughts , especially those that get in the way of living a productive life.

A professional can teach you how to use the Socratic questioning method to discover where and how your automatic thoughts are biased or illogical.

Some questions you may want to ask include:

1. Is this thought based on emotion or fact?
2. What evidence is there that this idea is true?
3. How can I test this belief?
4. What bad could happen? What can I do if the worst happens?
5. What ways are there to interpret the information?

For example, if you experience a cognitive distortion called catastrophizing, you may assume the worst possible outcome in a stressful situation. When questioning this way of thinking, you can ask yourself to list all the possible outcomes. You might ask yourself how likely each possible outcome is.

Important! Questioning allows you to consider new possibilities that are not as drastic as the catastrophic ones you may be afraid of.

How to improve your life

It is quite possible to learn to perceive different reality, and not just its black and white colors. Ambivalent thinking does not correspond to the division between “good” and “bad.” Once you have made your choice, you can confirm your decision without thinking about it further. But gray (or ambivalent) thinking differs from black and white in that a person is able to accept the opponent’s position. This way of perception reduces the degree of determination, but brings benefits in the form of wisdom. And you can not only change your life, but remember yourself in childhood, when you already used this method.

Advantages

While it's helpful to work with a therapist first, cognitive restructuring is a technique you can learn to do on your own once you know how it works.

Being able to identify and change your negative thinking patterns has many benefits. For example, this might help:

• reduce stress and relieve anxiety;
• strengthen communication skills and build healthy relationships;
• replace unhealthy coping mechanisms such as substance use;
• restore self-confidence and self-esteem.

How does the world turn black and white?

During the period of growing up, a person’s views become rigid, as “frameworks” are imposed from the outside. For example, is higher education beneficial for us or is it just a waste of time. Strong beliefs do not allow you to find multiple answers to a question. Although it is clear that the world is not so simple as to be divided into “bad” and “good”. It's not good to make hasty decisions, but it's also bad to take forever to make choices. Wisdom allows you to look at a problem from a variety of perspectives.

What types of problems can cognitive restructuring help with?

• eating disorders;
• depression;
• anxiety;
• post-traumatic stress disorder;
• substance use disorder;
• mental illness;
• family problems.

Cognitive restructuring can help you cope with difficult life transitions, such as divorce, serious illness, or the loss of a loved one.

Important! In any life situation in which negative thought patterns develop, cognitive restructuring can help challenge and change unhelpful thoughts.

How to learn to think ambivalently?

It is difficult to change the way you think, especially if you like radical judgments. But attempts will teach you to take a comprehensive approach to problems, which will help eliminate hasty assessments. There are a number of rules for thinking positively in order to change your destiny.

• You should abandon strict judgments. For example, don't pronounce them. By refraining from dividing into “bad” and “good”, one can understand that the world cannot limit itself to these two categories.
• If you take the perspective of an event, it will be possible to assess its significance.
• You need to accept that a person can make mistakes. By feeling yourself in your opponent’s shoes, you can realize that his point of view is the correct one.
• Having become accustomed to the fact that the true solution is not unambiguous, a person learns to accept a different opinion and see the problem comprehensively.

To change your life , as well as your thinking, to ambivalent at least at the level of the first step, you need to pay attention to how the child perceives the world.

Technique No. 1. Replacing negativity with positivity

To do this, you need to learn to observe your own thoughts and correctly distinguish negative from positive. You can try playing a game with yourself. Instead of: “I did everything wrong again...” you need to tell yourself: “I will definitely succeed. I can handle it". This technique will help get rid of negative thinking patterns and allow you to maintain performance in critical moments. It can be used in the most stressful situations, when self-confidence disappears and it seems that everything is going awry.

Technique No. 11. Take a break

To free your mind from negativity, you need to be able to completely break the train of all thoughts. This will help you on how to get rid of negative thinking in a short time. Many neuropsychiatrists claim that after just 90 seconds, any strong emotion rises and falls like a wave on the shore. Therefore, you only need 90 seconds to get out of the obsessive state of negativity and free your mind from everything.

You can imagine yourself sitting on the ocean. The fish around will symbolize thoughts. You just have to watch how everything flashes by. The same thing will happen with negative thoughts. They will simply float away with the current. Just 90 seconds of detachment from everything will help you let go of any disturbing situation. After this break, you need to take a deep breath and exhale 10 to 15 times. This technique will break the vicious circle and also the power that negativity has.