There’s a massive and disheartening misunderstanding happening in the world today, that if you’re in the right spot, at the right time, grow up in the right family, catch the best breaks, have good genes, or luck is on your side – that you can have health, wealth, and joy in your life. This simply isn’t true. Every person has the power to create this type of reality – the problem is, we’ve been conditioned to simply accept the hand we’ve been dealt without much question. How tragic is it that everything we’ve been brought up to believe isn’t true?

Our Thoughts and Only Our Thoughts Create Our Reality

Our ability to create a truly joyful life starts with what’s between our ears. Our thoughts, our emotions – they all dictate our next move. What most fail to understand is that our mind can create joy or pain. Depending on your thoughts and how negative they are, can really be the difference between a mediocre life of struggle, poor health, and unhappiness, or joy, health, and abundance.

For instance, those with a healthy brain and emotional balance are often healthy, have little issues financially, and are generally happy people! This is mainly because they either don’t have as many negative thoughts, or they do but are skilled at overcoming those thoughts. This ultimately leads to better problem solving, more ambition, action plans and follow through, and great impulse control, ie’ they won’t make decisions based on instant gratification – especially if it takes them off course from their goals. They usually have the ability to process problems easily and can overcome difficulties with a good attitude.

Negative thinkers, while they have all the same opportunities to create the same life as the person above, have a much harder time even visualizing a better life for themselves. Negative thinking is powerful, it can create doubt even in the face of proof, fear for no particular or valid reason, self-bashing despite progress etc. This can pose a slew of life-long problems including difficulties in relationships, work, life, health, health motivation, overall contentment, and of course, happiness. Sadly, the more negative our life becomes, the more negative our thoughts become. It’s like a vicious cycle of listening to negative thoughts, acting upon or not acting upon those thoughts, and then enduring the results of those thoughts – all the while our thinking becomes increasingly pessimistic and uninspired.

For whatever reason, negative thinking is more extreme in some, than others – but this doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it! Your thoughts can change, it just takes learning about your brain, and work to remove those negative thoughts!

So, whether you grew up in the projects of Detroit, or come from a family laden with addiction and abuse, it’s neither here nor there. Sure, it poses a different set of difficulties and challenges that someone who grew up in a healthy home in Silicon Valley would face – but the point I’m trying to make is every person has a unique ability to change their thoughts and emotions, by how much is dependent on your ability to get honest with yourself.

How to Recognize and Remove Negative Thinking

There’s many ways to work through negative thinking, but I think the bigger challenge is recognizing when it’s happening and to what extent is it effecting your life. Often times, people don’t even realize the level of negative thinking going on, which means the cycle I spoke about above is far more intense. It’s key that you learn how to stop and live in the moment especially when faced with new ideas, change or opportunities. When you pause, you can experience that moment, and only that moment.

If you’re able, pay attention to how you feel, and what thoughts are running through your mind. If you feel anxious about an opportunity to improve, and your initial thoughts are, I can’t, or I’m not good enough, or I’ll never be able to do that – this is negative thinking, even if for you it seems very, very real. If you get angry when faced with change, and your initial thoughts are, I don’t have time for that, or this is going to ruin everything! Well, that’s negative thinking!  If you’re faced with a new idea and instinctively think it won’t work or the odds are stacked against you – again…negative thinking!

How Do You Stop Instinctual Negative Thoughts?

Practice! Taking the time to dissect and break apart your negative thoughts will serve you well. Just as the new book “Joyful Transformation” suggests, it’s all about being aware and mindful of your thoughts. When you can take a thought and break down what truth and lies are present, then you can get a clearer vision of how to proceed. Let’s look at a few examples:

“I don’t have time for that”

The reality is you may be short on time, but everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, so yes, you indeed have time for that.

“This is going to ruin everything”

Logic says that’s impossible, what is it that this new idea, change, or opportunity would ruin that’s so vastly critical that it stays exactly the same forever? My guess is anything that is new, changes your current situation, or is an opportunity, is a good thing – nothing can stay the same forever so really, it’s about recognizing the lies you tell yourself and why you’re telling yourself those lies. 9 times out of 10 it’s because you are scared or your comfortability/security is being threatened.

“ I’ll never be able to do that”

Again, the lie here is “never”, it’s impossible to try something forever and not accomplish it. Never is an over-dramatized version of, I don’t think I’m good enough so why even try. When you know this, you can just try it and find out that indeed you were always good enough, you just never knew it because you were stopped by negative thinking before you were able to prove it to yourself.

You see, when you break down these negative thoughts it’s far easier to transcend them, just because you tell yourself something doesn’t mean you have to listen to, or believe it. The more you take actions against the things you say you can do, or don’t deserve, the sooner that negative thinking will shift to a more optimistic point of view. By doing what we say is impossible, we prove our thoughts wrong. There’s only so many times that you can prove yourself wrong before you start believing it! That is when you shift into abundance, health and joy!

What If You Can’t Stop Negative Thinking?

Now obviously everyone is different, and there’s a multitude of factors at play when dealing with the human brain, so if you’ve tried these simple strategies and they just don’t yield the results your looking for, it’s a good idea to seek help with this type of thinking – it truly does affect you’re your overall health, thoughts, and life! Click here to book a free 30 minute consult or call 979-798-5182 to discuss how the Meehl Foundation can help you live a life of health, wealth and joy!