Turning Negative into Positive

With this weeks blog post I would like to write about how I am focusing this week on turning the negative thoughts into positive thoughts. When you start realizing how many negative thoughts you can think in a day it can become pretty scary. Negative thinking patterns can have a strong and sometimes devastating impact on our relationships, our health, our work… our lives. It’s completely normal to have negative thoughts! It’s part of our evolutionary history. There is nothing wrong with you. We all have minds that have evolved to be constantly on the lookout for problems and dangers, so most of us have minds prone to have many negative thoughts. As a parent I have had to take a look at any negative thoughts that I am saying and how this creates negative thoughts in my girls heads. It can be a really small negative thought, for example, I have not had a really great day and I have been rushing around and things just not have gone as smoothly as I would have liked them to, I often find myself flustered and cursing under my breath! I will moan that today has been the worst day ever and that I am so exhausted and I just want the day to end, but now I have to do homework, cook, bath them and put them into bed - my whole family at this stage are feeling my negativity and feeding off of it. So how can I change these negative thoughts into positive and rewire my brains thoughts?

Here are a few examples of how you can try to change your negative thoughts into positive:-

Okay so the house was messy this morning but that is fine, I am going to get through it and while I do it I can listen to some music or listen to a podcast.

The traffic was a little bad and the person who absolutely should not have a drivers license really irritated me, but that is okay, I am fine and I have not had an accident and I am grateful that I have my car to get my to my destination.

I am feeling so tired and I am not looking forward to cooking dinner and doing homework tonight, I wish I was not always so exhausted so I could just get through the days. Start your morning right when you feel like this, get out of bed and be grateful and excited for your day ahead. Plan your day and make sure that you can manage to fit in at least an hour of some time for yourself to do what you want. If you are feeling tired, acknowledge that thought and think about it for a few minutes and figure out how you can overcome that thought positively. Perhaps you can go for a walk in some fresh air with the family or even by yourself to wake yourself up more and prepare you for the tasks you have ahead of you.

The same applies to our children and how we can teach them to start turning negative thoughts into positive from an early age. There is a Zen concept created by Dr. Arnold and he calls it the Monkey Mind. It is a part of the brain that races from one idea to the next, chattering endlessly, craving things, being unsatisfied and judgemental. Negative thoughts are like a naughty monkey running away instead of focusing on the task at hand. So what can you do once you notice that your Monkey Mind is off in the weeds? You need to flip your negative thinking. You can use this three step process:-

* Take a deep breath.

* Think to yourself "Stop. Relax."

* Say something positive to yourself like "I can handle this." or "I am strong"

By following this process, kids can learn to stop their negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones.

By trying to change your negative to the positive will take time and practice - but I can guarantee that you will eventually find that the quality of your life and your kids life will change. The challenge for this weeks blog is to change the negative into the positive.

Much love........