Negatives thoughts - preventing progression

mise_me

Hi,
For years I have been very negative in my head and it has held me back . It came to head in way one if many ways lately when I met a lovely fella but he finished it as he thought I was unhappy in myself . I have lots going for me but really need to try and stop the negative thinking , I have signed up for meditation and mindfulness courses here in Dublin . Would those that read these threads : posts have other suggestions please ? All 'positive ' suggestions are greatly appreciative in advance.

pinkbear

Hi mise_me

It's been a while since you posted, but I'm sure a lot of what you said is still relevant. I do a lot of mindfulness and meditation, and I'm a huge fan. Here are some suggestions, and a bit of my own rambling.


Meditation is basically about focussing on the now - i.e. the sensations that you are having and concentrating on what you are doing at any point - instead of over thinking and ruminating on "what ifs".

Your circumstances only make up 10% of your happiness. 50% is genetic, and 40% is how you deal with things. So while you think you are unhappy because of a particular situation, it is actually the thinking about it and the focussing on it that is really the problem. When I first heard this, it initially made me feel worse, as I wanted to believe that any bad experiences I had were foisted upon me and I was unlucky, and it was hard to take responsibility for them. Now I feel it is empowering, and I genuinely feel I have the ability to keep an underlying happiness through any kind of rough situation. An interesting fact is that in huge happiness studies where people were beeped by an app and asked at random times of the day what they had been doing, how much they were concentrating, and how they felt, the very surprising result was that people are happiest when concentrating at work. They are least happy when they are at home thinking and worrying about work.

Some good TED talks, and some youtube links are below. Watch these, and please, please, please try some meditation, even for a few hours a day. One of these talks below (Shawn Achor) talks about how we keep pushing off happiness until we reach success: i.e. at the moment you are telling yourself "I would be happy if my loyalty and hard work were rewarded", "I would be happy if my loans were paid off", "I would be happy if I wasn't worked". Achor believes that we need to turn around our recipe for success. We need to get happy NOW, and the other things will follow - we work more effectively and efficiently, and achieve greater recognition.

Meditations: On youtube look up "5 minute body scan" and you'll find loads, and also "Mindfulness Meditation track 1" (through to 10 I think). These are based on an excellent book by Penman and Williams.

Also watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbbMLOZjUYI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJHkYhEQ5nY
http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor...tml?quote=1291

On www.ted.com, or www.youtube.com: Search for mindfulness, happiness, meditation, or gratitude. In particular
Louis Schwartzberg
David Steindl-Rast
Andy Puddicombe
Eckhart Tolle
Michael Norton
Shawn Achor

Finally, start keeping a positive journal. Ideally you would do it about everything, but even if you do it just about work, it would be fantastic. The idea is, say you attend a meeting and you share a joke with a colleague (good), make a mess of your presentation (bad), have an idea how you can solve a problem (good), get put down by your boss (bad) and come out of the meeting with more work (bad). In your journal you write: "Shared a good joke with Mary at the start of the meeting this morning, we were giggling like school girls. Had a good idea about how I get the output figures up. Looking forward to putting this into practice." Try to come up with 3 new things every day, and you can repeat things, but you must constantly look for new things. Within 21 days you train the brain to scan for the good in situations, rather than the bad. Even if the good things are as banal as "Got paid today", "Nice soup in the canteen at lunch time" or "Bill's wife had a baby boy and all went well, I'm so happy for them", the act of writing them down exaggerates them and imprints them in your brain while shrinking the negatives.

When you talk about getting into a cycle of negative thinking, that is exactly what happens. Our minds have a negative bias, and left unchecked they will (unfortunately) think negative thoughts. When you think a thought, a tiny little neural pathway is created in your brain. When you think it again, that pathway is strengthened. When something else bad related to it happens, you get another link onto your path. In time, the smallest trigger starts a path of very negative thinking. If this is left unchecked it can lead to depression. Even when the depression goes, the weakened pathway is still there, but can be easily reignited, which is why depression recurs so easily. You have to actively not let the neural pathways form in the first place. How I started doing this was to literally sing out loud every time I had negative thoughts popping into my head. I would sing out like a lunatic (assuming I was alone), and the business of trying to remember the words of the song and hearing the songs and often dancing along forced the negative thoughts away. You can only think one thought at a time, so you are only ever one thought away from happiness. Your feelings follow your thoughts, not the other way round. i.e. If you think bad thoughts you will feel bad. Most people don't realise this; they think that they feel bad and then they have to analyse what is responsible for this bad feeling. Change your thoughts (which is difficult but not impossible) and you will feel better.

If you are interested you could start doing some Saturday or weeknight courses on mindfulness which will remind you. They are on in lots of places - I have used 4 or 5 Dublin places but none outside - but they tend to book out quickly. I have used the Dublin Buddhist Centre, the Sanctuary, and a few people in North County Dublin. You can also do online courses which give you more flexibility but are harder to stick to. Once you get comfortable with some of the main ideas behind it - e.g. concentrating on what you are doing, stopping and being aware of your breath, scanning for things to be grateful for, and shrinking the negative thought cycles - you must then work on making these changes permanent. Try to pick things in your life to act as a trigger to bring you back to awareness many times a day, even if it's just for a second at a time. E.g. my triggers are: brushing my teeth & hair, getting a text message or phone call, first thing in the morning and last thing at night in bed, in the shower, going to the loo. Other people use different things, like opening a door handle - something that you'll never go too long without doing.

The first course I did was 2 years ago, and immediately from the first night, I started on a route of slightly better thinking. I have had small set backs on the way, but in general I have much healthier thinking patterns now than I had before. Admittedly I was always an optimist, so I didn’t need as much change as many people, but I was a busy-headed optimist.

Two more points before I finally stop rambling! One is that exercise is really good for this. It could just be a ten minute mindful walk at lunchtime (taking different routes each day is best). And the final thing is don't worry if mediation has never been easy for you. It's not easy for me, and to be honest I suspect most people (even Buddhist monks) wonder if they are doing it right. But it is the act of trying that makes the difference. I certainly don't get out of body experiences or see white lights when I meditate, my thoughts wander off all the time, but I gently try to bring them back and try again without judging my 'failure' at it. And I always, always feel better after mediation, so I can only assume that it is a success. I often meditate in bed as I have lots of sound tracks downloaded. Invariably I'm asleep in two minutes, but that's fine, and I sleep better now than I used to.

Best of luck mise_me. Let me know what works for you.

The One Doctor

I've mentioned this before, but here it is for your perusal. Negative thoughts are a habit, and habits can be broken with persistence. The method I use and have recommended to lots of people is easy to remember and to the point:

'Shut the fuck up Shut the fuck up...'

Keep saying this until the negative thoughts go away. When they come back, keep saying it again. And so on. Done often enough it will break the brain's habit. You can use it for any repetitive thoughts. I know it sounds a bit odd, but it works.

mise_me

Right that's one way of stopping them I suppose!!! - The One Doctor

Pink Bear thanks very much for all this useful information.

Think I need to try harder but sometimes I just think too much, want to break from thinking!

Mister_Happy

Great post pink bear.
Def gonna check the videos out.

Mise_me best of luck with the less thinking, it's way to easy to over think things.