5 Ways To Stop Negative Thoughts Every Time!

“Happiness and negativity are constantly running a race, it seems in my life, happiness always loses”!

Does this sound like your life?

Are you a person who has positive, happy moments in life but always seem to be pulled back into longer periods of negative thinking where you struggle to see the positive in your life?

Here are 5 common causes of these negative “episodes” and how you can defeat them more quickly.

1. Victim Mentality

One very common tendency is to take any challenge, setback or unexpected feedback personally and to immediately fall into the “victim” mentality.  Do you know anyone like this…someone who makes every situation all about them and how they are somehow the victim?  I have to say, this is one of the behaviors I try to avoid at ALL costs…once you fall into this trap you are placing yourself in a position where you give up total responsibility and control for your own feelings instead putting all of your effort into trying to get others to take pity on you and giving you a temporary boost by saying or doing something nice for you.   Each time you fall into this trap you lose self-esteem, you prolong periods of negative feeling in your life and you will eventually eliminate the good people around you tending to attract other “complainers” and those that have given in to the “victim” mentality.  Instead, you want to turn the tables, take responsibility for what has happened, learn from it and chart a new course ending your temporary negative thoughts channeling your energy into positives

2. Need For External Validation

I actually see this one getting worse for young people as they seek more and more validation on social platforms.  Girls now spend hours making sure they take the perfect “selfie” all driven by the need for external validation.  If they fail to receive that validation they are crushed.  There is no other validation in life other than that which comes from within.  Work on making sure you understand yourself, your beliefs, your goals, your passions and interests in life, your values and how you can extend those to help others in the world.  From this place of inner synergy comes huge satisfaction and peace of mind.  When your validation comes from deep within you external events no longer crush you and you will have defeated a leading source of negative thoughts and moods forever

3. Letting One Bad Day Turn Into Others

Look, we all have moments, hours or even days in our life that challenge us.  We struggle, we are embarrassed, we are made fun of, something bad happens to someone we know, like and love…the question is how long will we let that bad experience impact our life?  For many, a switch is flipped and suddenly you begin to look for the bad in everything instead of the good.  To overcome this challenge accept that there will be bad moments in your life, but that they are temporary and will pass.  That way you won’t overreact, will have the patience to wait them out and not exaggerate the impact of them on your life

4. Loneliness

This is one I don’t really understand, but does impact many, many people.  To me, having time to myself and having time to re-synchronize with my inner thoughts, feelings and spirit are critical and I take every chance I get to use my “alone” time in that way.  I also purposely do NOT spend time with many people I come into contact with in life simply because they are too negative, angry or too wrapped up in themselves.   If I have time to help them I will, but people do need to be at  certain state in their lives to accept help and not being at that point, they are simply not ready to open their minds sufficiently to accept assistance.  For you, if you struggle with loneliness, then make sure you are friends with yourself first!  You will find that knowing yourself is 90% of the battle.  Once you are more settled, happy and have internally fueled energy you will find others are more attracted to you without you even trying

5. Overwhelm 

I bet you can relate to this one?

In today’s society it is pretty hard not to experience moments of overwhelm.  We are forced to know more, be more connected, make faster decisions and juggle more balls than any generation in our past.  To handle feelings of overwhelm you want to have a clear understanding of your values and priorities in life.  These become your criteria for assessing all that you focus on.  When we are not clear on our values, beliefs, purpose and passions then we get pulled into several directions without being able to control our response – this leads to massive overwhelm manifesting itself as stress, anxiety, shutting down and health problems.  One of the most effective ways you can deal with overwhelm and bring back your objective, calm mind is meditation.  Meditating for 20-minutes twice a day (for the first 3-weeks) and then once a day thereafter can bring huge benefit to combating overwhelm and the symptoms that develop as a result

We cannot stop living life or the challenges that come at us while we travel our exciting journey, what we can control is how we approach the challenges and how we maintain control, calm and positive thoughts in the face of where today we may be filled with negativity.

How about you, do any of these causes of negative thoughts weigh on you?