Negative Thoughts Are Your Friend
3 Benefits of Negative Thinking
Negative thoughts have been touted as the source of many problems in life. “Be a positive thinker” is the battle cry of the self help and personal development industries.
Because we have been educated this way, most of us struggle and become frustrated. We are trying to become positive thinkers with hopes of attracting more of the good stuff into our lives.
When you try to push away negativity, you are in fact resisting it. This very resistance causes a great deal of internal conflict, mental confusion and a huge energy loss from exerting mental effort trying to avoid negative thinking.
Thoughts are memories stored in every cell of our bodies as energy. When you recall a stored thought (memory) any negative emotional energy associated with that thought is reactivated.
Then we expend even more energy trying to overcome or resist the thought.
Are you beginning to see why so many of us walk around tired all the time?
Negative Thoughts – 3 Benefits:
- Safety and security.
- Exposes where you are stuck – what’s blocking your success.
- Helps to define what you do want.
1. Safety and Security:
If you were walking along and decided to cut down an alley, your subconscious might say “Don’t go down here, it’s not safe.” Most of us will listen and avoid the potential danger.
The subconscious is always looking for potential danger. It is a normal human process, passed on through genetic DNA and childhood training. Its purpose is to keep us safe and protected at all times.
Can you think of the numerous times where your safety would have been threatened if you didn’t listen to these negative warnings by your subconscious?
2. Exposes Where You Are Stuck:
The problem is not that we have negative thoughts, but rather we don’t know what to do or how to deal with them.
Your negative thoughts are actually a friend. They are the window of opportunity to self improvement and change.
When you choose to become consciously aware of your subconscious thought patterns, you will begin to see these stored negative, self-limiting thoughts and understand how they are sabotaging your success.
Accept these thoughts as yours and look at them without judgment. Dissect the thought and drill down, looking for the root cause or source.
You will discover old beliefs that are no longer valid. These are your self imposed limitations on achieving success.
3. Helps To Define What You Do Want:
How is it possible a negative thought can help you achieve success?
Simple, negative thoughts point to what you don’t want. Now you simply reframe the thought by asking - “What do I choose to manifest?”
Let’s look at an example. Someone says “It doesn’t matter what I eat, I keep gaining weight.”
What this person really wants is to be “fit and healthy; but their self-talk is attracting "more weight."
By focusing their thought and energy on what they choose, instead of what they don’t want, new thoughts, ideas and information will present themselves to help achieve this goal.
Incidentally, if you believe in the teachings from “The Secret” movie or the Law of Attraction, this is how simple it is to change your vibration to attract more of the good stuff.
The subconscious does not associate anything as either negative or positive.
Think of it like Google. If you type “no self help” in the search, all the sites you get are related to – you guessed it – self help!
If you are thinking “not gaining weight” you will continue to add on those extra pounds.
Therefore, instead of stating what you don't want - get in the habit of asking for what you choose.
Conclusion:
We get so hung up on the belief we should only think positive thoughts. It is humanly impossible for anyone to be a positive thinker all the time.
To change what you get in life, all you really need to do is become consciously aware of your negative thoughts and beliefs and change the direction of your mind to focus on the opposite – what you do want.
When we let go of the resistance to negativity, we allow ourselves to be present with and accept who we are right now.
Any thought whether negative or positive is neither good nor bad, it just is. It is only our thinking that makes it so.
In Buddhist teachings, they explain that to react out of our conditioned patterns is human suffering.
Stop your suffering and set yourself free by accepting negativity as “normal.”
This is a great way to stop draining your energy and creating negative vibrations. Acceptance also gives you the freedom to “choose” where you focus your attention; instead of focusing on resistance.
Notable Quote:
"Celebrate whatever arises in consciousness
without clinging to anything."
~Hale Dwoskin~
