Breaking Free From Negative ThoughtsHave you ever had negative thoughts? Have you ever uttered it out loud, even in jest? Most of us have. More importantly, more often than we’d like to admit. Negative thoughts can be damaging not only to our self-esteem, but can begin a cycle of thought and behavior which negatively impacts our own perception of events in our lives. For example: Perhaps you’ve been assigned a special project at work. You’re confident in taking it on, but upon completion you notice one tiny error. You begin to berate the way in which you handled the project, even though the error was not significant. While your boss is telling you what a great job you’ve done, you begin to make excuses for it. Your negativity has minimized the entire project, and magnified one area of it. What steps can you take to avoid this pattern? Take a step back and look at the project objectively. Not only did you complete it in an efficient manner, but it will become the template for future projects. Forget about the mistake; think about what you’ve achieved. The holidays are approaching and you need to begin the house-cleaning project. You look around and decide it’s just too much; you can’t do it; why bother. Stop! Take a deep breath and consider dividing up the tasks. Enlist the aid of your family to help by assigning each one a specific job. Once you begin the process of prioritizing, you will feel better and it will be accomplished.
When you have an eating disorder, this can be one of the most damaging and repetive things you do. Everytime you look in the mirror, step on a scale or even try on clothes you tell yourself you're too fat! Look in the mirror and all you see is huge legs, big stomach, and so on. The worst part is, after repeatedly telling yourself this, you believe it. No matter how thin or heavy! It's like brainwashing yourself. The way I finally broke this habit was to quit weighing myself (major biggie!!!) and to only look in mirrors that you could see from the shoulder up. Don't get me wrong, this took years, not days. But at least now I can look in a full length mirror and I'm pretty much comfortable with what I see. Sure, every now and then, that little 3 letter word (fat) comes popping out, but now it's more like a couple of times a month instead of 20 times a day. Try it out and let me know if it helps you! You’ve started a diet before the holidays. One day, you have a yearning for a particular dessert. You quickly decide your diet is over, and it wasn’t worth the effort. You walk over to the mirror and utter to yourself, “I’m fat, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Wrong! Setting yourself up for failure by thinking negatively about the way you look does not solve the immediate problem. Instead, admit to cheating; promise you’ll try harder, and allow positive thoughts to guide you through it. Probably the most intensely negative thoughts processes are experienced by teenagers. Perhaps their life isn’t going the way they thought it would; or they are unhappy with school; or peer pressure has made them act in a way that cultivates anger. “I don’t want to live anymore,” one might say. While they may not mean what they say; it is still a sign which requires immediate intervention. The thought can become a seed which could germinate into the act itself. Either through family, friends, counselors or skilled professionals – negative thoughts can quickly be turned around into positive reinforcement. It is up to each and every one of us to ensure that any hint of negativity is purged from our thought process; and to avoid imprinting unwelcome thoughts onto our family or friends.
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