Cultivating Your Mind with Affirmative Thinking
Who’s a fan of Affirmative Thinking? I know I am!
One of my favorite aspects about holistic living is acceptance of all sides. Shadow and light, negative and positive, waxing and waning, expansion and contraction. Embrace the yin-yang of life!
I’m had many discussions about affirmative thinking. I’ve heard others say, “I wish I didn’t have these negative thoughts.” I’ve even heard someone say they wish they had no negative thoughts at all. That’s a pretty big request. A request that’s not actually doable.
So, how about taking another approach. Accepting that negative thoughts will continue to come along. With this acceptance, you can then go on to appreciate the negative thoughts. Ok, that may seem too much to ask at first. But what if you can see a new purpose in having negative thoughts. To have them occur not as something to get you down or throw you off your game, but as a springboard for you to realign your thoughts at any given moments.
I keep hand a set of techniques to help cultivate the mind. By cultivating the mind I mean becoming aware of negative thought patterns and replacing them with affirmative thoughts. These techniques are powerful and can help tip the scales leading to more productivity and success for those who use them regularly.
Here are some mind cultivation techniques:
Cut It Off
With this technique, the instance you recognize that you’re having a negative thought — you cut it off and insert a totally different thought into your mind. You don’t argue with it, you don’t analyze it, you don’t defend yourself against it — you just immediately cut it off and insert a new thought. The key is to do it the instance you recognize it. Try it.
Observe the Negative
You observe the fact that you had a negative thought, and you label it. Ask yourself, what is happening within me. But don’t get caught up in it. The fact is that negatives only have power over you when you react to them. Once you know this, you are 75% on the way to eliminating negative thoughts. If you fail to react to the negative thought, then it has no power. Negative thoughts get their power from you. When they come, calmly remind yourself its just a thought.
Exaggeration
Whatever the negative thought is, you exaggerate it into ridiculousness. You rephrase it to the extreme that you realize it is ust a silly thought. By making it ridiculous, you take its power away. This technique can be lots of fun as you move forward with the outrageousness.
Counteract the Negative with the Exact Opposite
Whatever your negative thought is, insert the exact opposite thought to balance it out. For example, if you think you’re NOT going to do something you want to do, immediately after you have that thought, deliberately think the thought that you ARE going to do it.
This is where to start if you notice negative thoughts taking up too much of your headspace. Try not to stress out about. Every human being with a thinking brain, goes through a regular amount of fielding negative thoughts. Know that you have the tools to deal with them.
Remember your mind is a garden. Your Garden. You must tend to it.
