I get assailed daily with negative thoughts and often wonder why. I know that I’m not actively thinking the worst or preparing for the worst case scenario but where on earth do those thoughts come from?
If I dwell on one negative thought, it’s as if I have opened Pandora’s Box and the forces of hell are unleashed.
A horde of other negative thoughts clamor for my attention and they get worse if you dwell upon them. They appear to breed and grow as you spend time mulling them over. Worst of all they gang up on you as they support each other and lead from one subject to the next.
You may have felt a twinge of pain in your arm and before you know it there are images of you lying in ICU with a full blown heart attack.
But first I need to define what I mean about negative thoughts.
Any thought of failure, disappointment, trouble, accident and sickness is a good starting point. These thoughts are about you and this is what I want to focus on at the moment. A large portion of our negative thinking is external in that it condemns and criticizes others but those would fall into another category.
So why do we expect the worst?
What is it with the human race that finds great pleasure in worry and fear?
Why do we focus on the negative and repeatedly dwell on those thoughts?
Worry and fear are the two things we dread most and yet they are never far from our mind. Scientists have studied how negative thoughts affect our physical lives. Fear creates massive hormone surges in our bodies as the flight or flight reaction takes place. Your body suffers under this barrage and yet you neither fight nor take flight leaving you emotionally and physically drained.
Negative thoughts have the power to change our mood, alter our perception and mold our character. So surely the opposite must work as well? Surely we can make our moods better, believe the best of any situation and create a better life for ourselves?
Why is it so difficult to see or think about good, helpful and positive things?
There is a never ending stream of negative information bombarding your mind and it is very hard not to react to it. The media appears to thrive on negative news and the world we live in has no problem with supplying them with more bad news than we can handle. As a matter of interest watch your local news and see how many positive articles you can find. Which begs the question – why enlightening, uplifting and encouraging news never sells?
Are you programmed to be negative and expect the worst?
Is this so that you can handle the disappointment of life as you expect to fail? And when you fail it is not so bad because you had already prepared yourself?
Are you stuck in an endless loop in that those in media are already programmed negatively and know that this sells and so only focus on negatives?
Are the news moguls programmed to believe that bad news sells and the readers programmed to believe in hearing bad news so that they can feel good about themselves because of the bad that has happened to others?
The above points are an attempt to make sense of where negative thoughts come from because if you know their source then you can stop the input. You know that many thoughts come from what you have experienced in your life but surely you cannot say that your entire life has been negative? I know we all have positive memories about people and places so why don’t we focus on them?
Your thinking is programmed by what you have been exposed to and your subsequent way of life. If your parents, siblings and peers built you up then your outlook of life would more than likely be positive. If they broke you down then your thinking will more than likely be negative.
A Possible Pattern is as follows:
- Formative years – parents, siblings, circumstances (positive/negative)
- Education – peers, teachers, experiences, beliefs (good/bad)
- Life – relationships, career, mental input (success/failure)
This works either way but because the system you live in is so geared towards negativism, unless you make a concerted effort to go against the flow your outlook will be pessimistic. I believe that once you have been programmed in a certain way of thinking, it will be your outlook on life. I also believe that your thoughts will trigger that response and you create your own HD, 3D, full Technicolor endless loop horror movie.
You will always be exposed to negative thoughts but your internal programming will determine whether you accept them or reject them.
Where do you think negative thoughts come from?
Are they internal or external?
And if external – who and why?
Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same. ~Francesca Reigler