Reduce your negative thinking
According to the latest research, and it’s from here in Canada—humans have on average, 6200 thoughts per day. I don’t know how many are positive vs. negative but have seen statistics that claim 85% are negative and 95% are the same thoughts you had yesterday.
This is likely the result of what I call “The unrelenting force” which comes from the human tendency to be hyper-focused on the negative. This was our survival mechanism over thousands of years where we learned to avoid what could harm us—and it actually serves you quite well when you are in imminent danger. However today, you’re not likely to find yourself in a life or death situations each and every day. The downside of your survival mechanism, is that it can unnecessarily spiral you into a negative emotional state and comprises your brain’s executive function and your ability to think clearly.
Another human tendency, when contemplating how to deal with a situation—whether it’s positive, like telling someone you love them for the first time, or negative, like telling someone they are losing their job, regardless of the situation, you are more likely to overestimate the negative outcomes and underestimate the positive outcomes.
And get this—when you have a negative experience, it immediately gets stored in long term memory. This is your brain trying to protect you and keep you alive.
When you have a positive experience, to get that experience into long term memory you need to hold it in your mind for at least 10 seconds, and depending on the experience, it may take 20 or 30 seconds. If you want to be able to recall a pervasiveness of goodness, you’ll want to have a lot of good experiences from your life stored in long term memory.
I like how neuroscientists describes your brain:
“You brain is like velcro for negative and teflon for positive.” - Rick Hansen
For the past 5 months I’ve been reducing my negative thinking using one simple technique.
I tap my chest with an open hand. I can feel it and I can hear it. And then I ask myself, “What am I grateful for ?”
This 2-step process resets my brain in a similar way as when you reset your computer. The chest tap puts my mind in the create positive place it needs to be.
I’ve found two big benefits since I started tapping my chest:
I have less negative thinking
When I go into negative thinking, I catch myself more quickly
So for you—do you want less negative thinking ?
Give it a try. What have you got to lose ?
