How to go from negative thoughts to positive thoughts?
Hi guys
The steps that I'm setting up here for you, are steps I learned personally and professionally (as a childcoach). I always combine my professional research with personal experiences. So sometimes, my work is even rather more personal than professional.
Step 1: Positivity is your new focus. Decide for yourself that it is time for a fresh start, "Happiness is a decision"! It actually really is. You just have to wake up and decide for yourself what kind of day you want to have. I learned this after a long painfull breakup. After weeks/months of tears, I was literally running out of tears. On a random morning, I decided that it was time to finally take action. To stop the mourning and feeling sorry for myself and to not start crying once again. I decided in my bed that on that exact day, my journey to my newfound happinesss would start!
Step 2: Recognize moments when you end up in a negative spiral. Are you really doomed? Are you really that much of a sad failure? Are you negative in advance about something that will happen soon? Is this stress really that usefull to you? Well, tell yourself to STOP. Stop right now!
From now on, you only want thoughts that can actually help you
Important here is to be kind to yourself, you can make mistakes. You're not a failure. Why? Because, when you're reading this, you're interested in getting better. Understanding that there is something that you want to work on is the first step of getting better... SO you already took that big step.
Also; it's totally okay to make mistakes and to mess up. For me, I'm currently focussing on my anger... but this does not mean that I'm not getting angry ever anymore. It's a process, a journey.
My clients/ parents of clients often ask me when they'll finally be better. When the anger they're working on will finally be over. Well, first of all, having emotions is humans so they'll probably never be over.... Second of all, this behavior probably took you your entire life to make it "your own" so learning to deal with it will probably need some time as well. Okay, it won't take you another life to get over things, bu know that this can take up to weeks or even months.
Step 3: Practice this blocking on yourself. Each time you catch yourself having non-helpful thoughts again, tell yourself that it's time to stop with this negative energy. You're not helping yourself. I literally tell myself: "Steph, you're doing it again, stop now."...
What might also help is to maybe consider testing this with a friend. When he or she is telling negative unhelpful things, tell her/him to to stop. She or he can do this for you as well.
Step 4: After blocking this negativity, you will focus on your breathing. I already told you guys the importance of prober belly-breathing... so I'm not going to tell you all about it once again... just know that breathing can help you to relax.
Focus on breathing. Keep practicing correct, self-calming breathing and just focus on that. Your thoughts are only on the breathing. If your thoughts start to wander around again, you restart to breath once again, not thinking about anything else. This will also take away a lot of other thoughts...
Step 5: Learning to reverse negative thoughts. Always look for something positive (helpful) in a negative situation. This is an important mindswitch to make. An example: "Oh no it is raining, we cannot go for a walk outside today and I really need it" => becomes: "It is raining, okay no problem we can play a nice game inside. This will help me to relax as well!".
Each time you catch yourself with a negative thought, try to rephrase the sentences into more positive onces. This is probably the most important, but hardest step of this entire process.
You can start with writing down some sentences you use a lot.. and put them in a table. You write negative thoughts on the left side and write positive ones that mathc the situation on the right side. For each negative sentence, you write a positive one on the right.
Step 6: Keep practicing! This process will take a while! No stress.
And these are the steps that can help you to change yourself and your attitude. If there's any question, just ask me and remember: keep on practicing!
X Steph