Tag: Positive thinking

If you’re like me, you often worry or stress about the complications in your life. Because I know this state so well, I’m sharing a few tips for turning the negative upside down to positive thoughts. Trust me: They work!

1. First, listen to your thoughts and notice how they cause tension in your body. Perhaps they signal anger, pain, frustration, envy, or an insatiable need for security, recognition or love.
2. Stand apart from them—like you’re on a balcony, just observing your mind’s contents. Do NOT condemn the thoughts or feelings. Thank them for their attempts to keep you safe and secure during a turbulent lifetime.
3. Recognize who is watching the thoughts: A part of your mind independent of your thoughts and emotions. It’s your choice: Do you want to stay in the drama of your fear-filled mind, or do you want to detach and experience peace and happiness?
4. Now, breathe slowly and deeply until your body calms down. Withdraw your attention from your worrying thoughts and focus on your breathing.
5. Realize there is a “you” greater, stronger, and wiser than the imagined disturbances. Yes, the operative word is “imagined.” Your fearful mind has woven a series of “whispered lies” based on your past—usually resulting in fear, guilt or remorse. DO acknowledge them; But do NOT believe them. They sound like this:  “I always…(followed by something negative, e.g. fail in love, am rejected, sabotage my success) and I can’t overcome it.” OR “If only he or she hadn’t done (fill in the blank), we would all be OK.“
6. Try writing your mind’s false messages in a journal, so you can decide if they’re really true. In time, you’ll see them as predicting one of two horrible things: 1) past pain will repeat itself, or 2) the future will be disastrous.
7. Once you see your mind’s lies for what they are, you can dissolve them by owning the truth of who you are:  a being of goodness and light whose perfection was obscured by false beliefs.
8. Connecting with this essence of goodness will melt the apparent barriers to your happiness. Use meditation, affirmations, prayer, therapy, yoga, inspirational reading, groups, or any other method that helps you reject your negative thinking and find peace, clarity and connection.

You might be wondering how you could possibly solve your problems by using these “indirect” practices rather than attacking the issue directly:  It might seem upside down.

But, when you connect with your inner wisdom instead of your fear, sooner or later the answers will appear—in the most amazing way and for the best of all involved.

Gigi Langer is a former “queen of worry.” She’s also an educator, speaker, and author of Worry Less Now  coming out in Fall 2017, the new book contains 50 powerful tips to defeat negative thinking, find inner peace, clarity, and connection.