You’ve probably heard of the power of positive thinking many times. Positive thinking really can do wonders. But the question is what positive thinking really is. Positive thoughts are nothing but tender thoughts of sharing, connecting and loving – yourself, people, things and ideas. Negative thoughts, on the other hand, are rough mental energies of excluding, disconnecting and hating – yourself, people, things and ideas.
Only by looking closely at the definition of positive and negative thoughts is it obvious that negative thoughts can’t bring anything positive into your life. Negative thoughts are also called cognitive distortions. The name comes from the fact that when you think negatively, you interpret the reality as much darker than it really is – you most often see things much more negatively than they really are. Consequently you suffer, isolate yourself or get caught in depression.
Years of psychological research led to the discovery that negative thinking comes up in the following different forms: all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filtering, discounting the positive, jumping to conclusions, magnification and minimization, emotional reasoning, “should” statements, labeling, personalization and blame. It literally becomes a mental war that influences our lives in so many powerful ways that we often can’t catch on, can’t see it and can’t make the updates required to conquer it.
Negative thoughts are nothing but your mind going to war with others or with yourself. And you should never go to war, especially not with yourself. Update your mindset in the ways we have been discussing this week and you update so much more than we realize.
Biology gives us a brain. Understanding turns it into a mind.
Peace and Love, Jim
