Hello! Seiiti Arata. How can you eliminate negative thoughts? Or, even better, how can you CONTROL your negative thoughts?
When we read interviews and biographies of centenarians, people who lived more than a hundred years, we notice a common trait among them. Those who live long and healthy lives know how to avoid stress and negative thoughts.
1. Stop worrying about things you do not have control over.
From a purely logical perspective, to eliminate negative thinking you just need to stop worrying. Therefore, to eliminate negative thoughts, simply keep your focus on what is positive. If you still do not know how to control the focus of your thoughts, visit http://arata.se/focuscourse.
Think about this: If you have a problem, there are only two alternatives: Either it is something under your control, or it is something beyond your control.
If it is beyond your control, do not worry. It does not make sense to worry about things that you cannot do anything about. Worry will not help change reality, and therefore it is a waste of time. It is irrational to worry about something that is beyond your control.
On the other hand, if you are concerned about something that is under your control, do not worry: worrying still won’t change the reality. You simply need to do what should be done.
It sounds simple, doesn’t it? We need to learn to accept the situation as it is. There will be times when we cannot do anything about it, and then we have to question our beliefs about the situation. As we go through this process of self-questioning, it is possible to discover that we need to change our beliefs.
2. Understand the difference between the event and your interpretation of the event.
Imagine that you just got rejected. Your relationship with a person you loved is now over. What does that mean? If you want, you can interpret this as the end of the world, and you will never find someone who loves you as much. What if you find out later that your ex practiced cannibalism and killed and ate their previous partners? The fact of the breakup remains the same, but now your feeling is relief that you were not the next victim.
This macabre example serves to illustrate the following message: Only you assign emotions to the facts. Who creates meaning? You. The world around you is indifferent. The facts are objective. What is terrible for one person may be normal for another.
There is a big difference between “This event has happened” and “This event has happened, and this is terrible.” The part about what is terrible, acceptable, or good is a type of evaluation. And it is you who evaluates things.
Destructive feelings and negative thoughts have one origin: your beliefs. Your beliefs are always filtering events and giving meaning to them.
3. It is natural that negative feelings and fears are strong.
When you try to feed a bird, it will usually eat only if you leave the crumbs a little distance away from you. It is very rare for a wild bird to develop the comfort necessary to approach a human, because in the millions of years of evolution, only the birds that had an instinctive fear survived.
It is said that the dodos were huge birds that were not afraid of humans. They were easy targets for hunting and ended up extinct. We talked about this in episode 10 of the series Hello! Seiiti Arata, http://arata.se/hello10.
With humans, it is the same thing. We see all the headlines of violence and tragedy in the newspapers because it sells. It guarantees an audience. The media needs to sell ads, and the advertiser will put money only where there is attention. And attention is drawn to scary news.
Our brain is constantly trying to assess situations of danger and risk. We are very afraid of things. Although life in the city has all the comforts of civilization, in our DNA we are creatures designed by evolution to be afraid of the unknown.
Take the test: look around your room now at everything that is blue. Ready? Close your eyes now. Are your eyes closed? Good. Now tell me what in your room is green.
You can open your eyes now. You probably forgot a lot of things, because your focus was on what I asked for, which was the colour blue. Similarly, when your attention is focused on risk and fear, you fail to pay attention to opportunities and good things.
Your mind is very powerful. Your brain is able to respond to the requests you formulate. So if you start looking in your memory for the reasons you’re going to fail, you’ll certainly remember situations in the past when you were unsuccessful. Do you want to eliminate negative thoughts? Then look for explanations of how you can achieve the result, and your mind will be able to identify memories of events in which you succeeded.
This conversation about success and failure is very interesting, and so I’ve earmarked it for the episode next week. What I want you to do today is this: check out the demonstration class we have in Better New Year by visiting http://arata.se/betternewyear. This helps us to prepare everything for an excellent year and to take control of negative thoughts that hinder us. Better New Year is a fast course that will equip you to think differently and to finally overcome your negative thoughts with a series of practical activities. So visit now, http://arata.se/betternewyear