There’s nothing worse than getting caught in a negative cycle of thinking.
When we find ourselves in such a hole, it’s as if nothing could happen externally to
make us feel better on the inside. This realization only brings about feelings
of hopelessness and further deepens the negativity rut we’re stuck in. If you’re
struggling to remove negative thoughts from your subconscious mind, then this video is for you.
Did you know research suggests our mind thinks between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts per day.
Not only that, but here’s the real kicker: about 90% of those thoughts are the same thoughts as the
day before. These numbers illuminate how easy it is to get caught in a negative cycle of thinking.
They suggest that if our ‘today’ was full of negativity, there is a 90% chance our ‘tomorrow’
will be too. But it’s important to note that they aren’t biased towards negative thoughts,
as a day full of positivity is just as likely to lead to a positive tomorrow.
With that being said, what this research really highlights is the perpetual cycle of thoughts.
The idea that we think roughly 70,000 thoughts per day and 90% of those thoughts are the same as the
day before is a telling fact. It tells us that – to pin down the cause of our negative thoughts-
we should focus more on negative things that have happened instead of negative things that
are happening. To focus our attention inward, not outward. To look behind us,
not in front of us. Let’s look at the cycle of thoughts to understand how
one bad experience could leads to months of negative, subconscious thinking.
When we have an experience, it sparks emotions. Those emotions spark thoughts, and those thoughts
create our reality. So, when we have an experience that sparks negative emotions inside of us,
we have negative thoughts about it. We then pair the two together and the cycle begins…
If we wake up tomorrow thinking those negative thoughts – with a 90% chance that we will – they
flare up the negative emotions paired with them from the initial experience. But the thing is:
our mind can’t distinguish between the emotions we feel from our thoughts, and the emotions we
felt from the real experience. So, when we wake up thinking the thoughts tied to this experience,
thus sparking the emotions, it’s as if we’re reliving the experience. The negative emotions
lead back to the negative thoughts, and the negative thoughts back to the negative reality.
So, if you wake up every day with negative thoughts - It’s not necessarily that you’re
experiencing negative things every day, it’s that the negative cycle
of thoughts you’re stuck in is causing you to perceive everything negatively.
When it comes to identifying the cause, It's important to realize that our negative thoughts
are creating a negative environment, not the other way around. Of course,
we often have an initial bad experience that sends us into a downward spiral of negativity,
but from that point forward we do it to ourselves.
When we stop looking at things that are happening, and begin looking at
things that have happened, the source of our negativity often reveals itself more clearly.
For example, if your boss yelled at you two weeks ago in a very disrespectful way,
it likely initiated some bad feelings towards him.
You noticed the following week that this experience caused you to feel a bit of anxiety
every morning due to the thoughts and feelings you paired alongside it.
So, even though your boss hasn’t done anything out of line since, your mind continuously defends
against the possibility of him doing so. Now, you subconsciously go into work each day with anxiety.
If you go into work without this feeling, your subconscious mind will cause you to feel unsafe
and unprepared, as if you’d gone into work half asleep. In the name of feeling normal, you go into
work each day defending against an experience that happened months ago. Your anticipation of
it was as real as anything. So, although the experience never happens again, you relive it
every day that you go into work. The cycle of thoughts causes you to project an experience from
your past out into the present moment, making it a part of the reality that you experience.
You see how lost you’d be if you tried to find the root cause of this negativity in your daily life.
Your boss isn’t acting out, he acted out. There is nothing happening in your daily life to make you
feel bad, so you can’t change anything from your daily life to feel better. The real problem is
an experience you had months ago that now exist as information stored in your subconscious mind
or a memory, and when you recall that memory, all the negative emotions you’ve paired with it
arise. To remove the negative thoughts this experience is causing you,
you’ve got to create a new relationship with its memory.
You’ve got to give the experience new meaning so you can let go of what it means to you now.
The best way to do this is to reflect on the negative experience and take away anything
positive from it that you can. When we run from these experiences, the negativity from
them trickles into our day in ways that are uncontrollable. If we face them head on,
we can deal with the emotions we’ve paired with them and put new ones in place.
It’s as if we heal best from the inside out.
Like the video if it helped you out! Thanks for watching!