Negative thoughts creep into our lives almost daily and affect us in a lot of different ways. Be it to induce anxiety, increase stress, feel discouraged or just feel out of motivation to do anything.
These negative thoughts have their own implications as per the kind of person they occur to. But what matters is how these negative thoughts can be changed, or FLIPPED, into something more realistic and pragmatic.
A half glass empty (or a glass half full)
We all have met a few people in our lives who always view the world in a negative light. Be it in the shape of pulling someone down, not seeing obvious happiness in a situation or just showing toxic positivity.
Negativity generally inhibits our ability to see things in a better situation for us. But when we start replacing negative thoughts with more rational thoughts, it helps reduce our stress and anxiety. It tricks our brain into making a fake-it-till-you-make-it situation.
How to achieve this flipping success?
There are a ton of ways in which this flip can be achieved and some which even you must have developed on your own. Be it building a process of identifying and not letting those thoughts take over or building your own thoughts to counter these negativities.
But there are some more ways which can help flipping the negative thoughts. Some of these are like:
- Assuming that the opposite is true
- Seeping in 1% good in the 100% bad thought
- Magnifying on the things which help you grow
The power of learning
Sometimes putting yourself in the shoes as a student of life might help you. When you are hit with a barrage of negative thoughts, take a step back and think what all you can learn from it. It might take you to a place where you would be thinking of the solution and not focusing on the problem of these negative thoughts.
Leveraging the devil’s advocates in your circle
Friends, family, colleagues – all of these may constitute your circle. But who among them will be the person who will put you in your place, who will give you constructive criticism and also an alternative view? Talk to those people and keep an open mind. They may help you in changing your behavior pattern and building a plan so that these thoughts don’t bug you again.
The past success biases
Sometimes we are so engrossed in our negative thoughts that we forget how some of our past successes turned out to be great when facing a similar situation. We may or may not have faced these negative thoughts previously. But some lessons are overlooked in the present when we are facing these thoughts. And when we take a step back to analyze those previous situations, we feel light, we mostly have a solution and then we do the flip!
So how well does the flipping work?
To put in two words – really well. When we start flipping negative thoughts, we start consciously making an effort to reduce our stress and anxiety levels, start feeling a lot lighter and become a more solution-seeking person than a solution-sulking person.
It definitely is not easy to incorporate this flipping in our daily routine. We can start from targeting our smallest problems that induce negative thoughts and then start flipping them. Then we move onto the big ones and flip them too. We are not expected to know it all in a single day. All we should do is to put in an effort, and take that step towards a better self.