Negative thoughts and behaviors are a vicious cycle. Once you start thinking negatively, it's hard to stop. And then when you think negative thoughts, your mood turns bad and makes you more likely to act in negative ways. The result is that nothing good happens for very long because the negativity carries over into other areas of your life and prevents positive things from happening. This article will give some tips on how to break this cycle so that the pendulum swings back to being mostly positive again!
Identify Negative Thoughts
When we're feeling down or angry, it can be difficult to notice our own tendencies toward negativity. It helps if we first identify what these negative thoughts are before trying anything else! There are two key strategies to identifying your negative thoughts. The first is by writing down your thoughts and taking a look at them. This helps you identify which of your thoughts are most frequent, which help to create the cycle of negativity in your life.
The second strategy for identifying negative thoughts is paying more attention to what you're thinking about. Many times, our minds become so used to thinking the same types of thoughts about certain things that we don't even notice that we're doing it! So try to pay closer attention to your thoughts and see if you can't notice any negative ones sneaking in.
Hang Out with Positive People
Negative people are often drawn together because they reinforce one another's fears and anxieties. In fact, the more negative people you're around, the harder it is to break away from those patterns of thinking that lead to negativity. If you find yourself around negative people, first try to sit back and notice how they can create some pretty terrible dynamics together! There's often a lot of complaining or whining about everything that's wrong, and this can spread to you if you're not careful.
Catch Negative Thoughts during the Day
Monitoring your thoughts during the day is a great way to catch yourself in time if you're thinking negatively. You don't want negative thoughts to build up into frustration or even something much worse! So try setting aside some time every day to check in with yourself and see if you're feeling negative in any way. Then, start catching yourself when a negative thought pops up.
Venture Out Into New Situations
Sometimes, our negative thoughts come from worrying about how we'll do in certain situations. If you think negatively about your abilities, then you might hesitate to do things because you feel like you won't be able to accomplish what's required of you.
If this sounds familiar, try going out into some new situations that make you a little nervous. The more practice we have at something, the easier it gets and the less likely we are to worry about it. This is a pattern that can apply to anything, from meeting new people to going on dates. The more you get out there and try new things at jonasmuthoni.com/blog/list-negative-attitudes-behaviors, the easier it becomes!
Final Words
We all have negative thoughts and feelings from time to time, but it’s important that you take a step back and learn how those thoughts are affecting your life. In this blog post we discussed the difference between attitudes (thoughts) and behaviors as well as identifying sources of negativity in people's lives.