Do your thoughts send you spiralling down negative rabbit holes that leave you spending most of your days unhappy, miserable and anxious?
Do they have such control over your life that they stop you from doing things that you really want to do or from being the person that you really want to be?
What if I told you that I know the secret to unleashing toxic thoughts, negative behaviour and unhealthy habits????
Or that it is possible to overcome overwhelm, anxiety and self doubt???
Or that no matter who you are, everyone has the ability to slay negative thinking and focus on cultivating happiness instead?
Well, I am someone who has suffered from all of the above. And let me tell you, it’s no way to live. My anxiety, overwhelm and stress came about when my first daughter was born. I had never experienced any form of anxiety or extreme stress before having children, except for that natural mild anxiety that we all might feel before an exam or having to meet a deadline at work. So like many of you, I was dealing with something I had no idea how to fix.
After having my third child my anxiety only seemed to spiral. I dwelled too much on the bad. And not enough on the good. I got frustrated and irritated with my kids when I didn’t need to. And I generally struggled to find joy in the everyday.
After a long process of trying to deal with what was happening to me and searching furiously to break free from my anxiety, I stumbled upon an idea that seemed to recur as a solution in everything I read.
That solution is written everywhere. I had heard it numerous times. I had read it numerous times. But suddenly something triggered and I finally understood.
The secret to how you feel…. lies completely in what you THINK.
Wow, seriously!
It is literally physically impossible to feel an emotion unless you have a THOUGHT about something first.
Whether you are experiencing anxiety, overwhelm, happiness or gratitude, any emotion that you feel can only be triggered by what you are
THINKING!
Whilst pondering this idea, I came to the realisation that, if this is true, then negative thoughts or thought patterns must produce negative emotions!
So therefore positive thoughts must produce positive emotions!
This was my biggest AHA moment in my recovery from anxiety. This was truly trans-formative for me and the way I deal with anxiety or any other toxic thought for that matter.
You’ve probably heard the term, you are what you eat, but have you ever heard the term,
YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK?
Just take that idea, and think about this for a minute.
The average person thinks an astonishing amount of about 30 000 thoughts per day. Wow. Out of that incredible amount of thoughts in such a short time frame, about 85% of those tend to be negative.
Not only that, about the same percentage of the negative thoughts that you may be thinking today are the exact same thoughts you were thinking yesterday!
Hmm, so how about YOU?
If you were to take notice of your thoughts throughout the day, where do you think YOUR negative percentage might lie?
What is YOUR natural default when your kids spill their milk?
When you are running late for work or when you look at yourself in the mirror?
What we fail to understand is that our repetitive negative thoughts and constant stream of toxic thinking can actually produce our reality.
The truth is that no one has the ability to be happy 100% of the time. But what we do have the ability to do is to make the decision to be happy and think pleasant thoughts more often than we don’t.
What we choose to give our attention to, what we choose to think, well, it shapes how we live.
So where do toxic thoughts come from?
Out toxic thoughts have been mentally constructed throughout our lives and stem from the image we have mentally constructed of ourselves, our self image, which have been formed from our past experiences, our successes and failures, embarrassing moments and how other people have treated us in the past. What we need to know, is that our beliefs may not (and more often are not) be true, however we often get caught in the habit of believing lies that we tell ourselves everyday simply because our self image is not intact. And without a healthy self image it is impossible to slay those toxic thoughts away.
Even usual daily living can make us unhappy, simply by the way we have habitually fallen prisoner to our self image. We can react to petty annoyances with frustration, grumpiness or maybe irritability purely because it has become a habit.
But what if we could change our perspective on that glass of spilled milk, on those anxious thoughts we continually have or even how we look at ourselves in the mirror every day for good?
Well actually, here is the good news!
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can change the way we think and we can heal our brains in order to heal ourselves. Taking control of our minds and changing how we deal with our thoughts so they no longer hold us captive in our negative emotions is the number one key to creating peace and joy in our everyday lives.
But what we often don’t realise is that every moment of every day, we have a choice! Happiness is a mental attitude, a mental habit that we can deliberately choose to give our attention to.
And the truth is, that we all possess the ability already within us and have the power to shift that spiral of negative thinking
when we are willing to.
The trick is in reprogramming your BRAIN
Reprogramming your brain to think positive thoughts instead of negative thoughts via constant repetition and practice which creates patterns of positive thinking. If you saturate your mind with positive thinking, then guess what? This will eventually become your natural default and you will naturally become more positive. And I promise you that this works.
Sure you say. Sounds amazing but how the heck do I do that you ask?
I want to share with you the simple techniques that both my husband and I have been using to reprogram our brains toward positive thinking. And let me tell you, the transformation that is taking place in our lives has been incredible.
Replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts is actually pretty simple. But it does take some time and consistent effort to reprogram your brain to automatically choose those different neurological pathways. But if you take the understanding that when we think new thoughts, we can actually physically alter our brains, it enables us to make those healthy and positive changes in our lives. And believe me when I say, the effort is so worth it. If you’re looking for a way to free yourself of negative toxic thinking, anxiety, overwhelm or a low self esteem, then this is how you do it.
4 steps to reprogram your toxic thoughts and think yourself happy instead.
Step 1: It’s time to uncover the lies in your self talk.
Everyone has inside of them both an inner critic and an inner cheerleader. For some of us, our inner critic is more dominant. It is the limiting and critical thinker and is the creator of your negative self talk. What you need to know here, is that the inner critic is NOT you. It is just a voice in your head which expresses some of your negative and limiting beliefs. What is more important for you to know here, is that this inner critic, is a
LIAR.
Because the critical and limiting things that it spits out at you, are simply NOT TRUE.
They may sound something like this…..
- I am fat.
- I am no good at….
- I am stupid.
- I can’t do this.
- Nobody likes me….
What we need to learn is that we can stand up to our inner bully by choosing to reprogram the thoughts that it throws at us and spit back positive thoughts instead.
Step 2: Understand how feedback loops work.
Remember, the big idea here, is that THOUGHTS are the culprit of all emotion.
Check out my Interrupted Thought Model that I have created below to see how feedback loops work in affecting our lives.
Our thoughts create our emotions, which drive the decisions we make, which leads to our actions and behaviour which then feedback again to our thoughts.
The Interrupted Thought Model
You may be wondering why the DECISIONS part of the model is highlighted.
Why? Because within this part of the process lies the secret to changing a negative thought. It is at this point that you have the power to INTERRUPT that thought you are having and remind yourself that YOU have a choice about how you think and therefore how you will respond to that initial thought. And ultimately, how you end up FEELING.
You have 2 options here.
- Continue to travel on through that negative feedback loop and keep thinking the same thought and experiencing the same feelings.
- Change direction and travel down that green arrow to reprogram it in a positive way.
Lets apply this model to a simple thought by imagining for a moment that your child did spill his glass of milk.
Example of a negative feedback loop.
The end result is not very pretty in the above scenario. The initial thought is negative and only produces negative outcomes which in turn leads you back to either the same negative feelings or more negative feelings about the situation.
So let’s look at the alternative. How we might respond when we DO make the choice to travel down the green arrow instead and reprogram that thought.
Your initial toxic thought still might be….. ‘Damn it. There is spilled milk everywhere. Now I have to clean it up. No one is ever allowed to drink milk in this house ever again.’
Which still triggers the EMOTIONS of…… frustration, irritability and anger.
However….here is where YOU have the choice to make a decision on how you will respond.
It is here that you can take a minute and choose whether to follow the arrow down the reprogrammed thought and instead respond as such.
You have successfully managed to interrupt that negative thought and produce different results in the same scenario. A simple switch in thought can create a totally different outcome and produce what is called a positive feedback loop.
And hooray! Everyone in the house is allowed to drink milk again.
So which would you prefer here?
YOU have the power to change your thought every time you have one.
Obviously, some toxic thoughts are easier to change than others. Some like the one above may be fairly easy to reprogram. But, for other, well embedded thoughts, your brain may need constant repetitive rewiring.
Step 3: Identify all of you TOXIC THOUGHTS, (the lies) you tell yourself by analysing your current self.
This is where you need to look specifically at who you are right now. What is your current self image. The best way to do this, is to grab a pen and paper and do a thought download, a list of all the negative and toxic thoughts that cause you the most pain as the person you are right now.
You can download my template here to help you.
It’s ok to be brutal here. The important thing is that you are honest about your thoughts. Here is an example of the thought download I did and you can see, I went to town on myself right there at the time. It’s really amazing when writing these thoughts down and reading over them how much power they suddenly lose. Sometimes I cant even believe the sort of crazy that comes out of my mind when I actually put it onto paper.
View my thought download examples here.
Step 4: Think of a YOU, that you would like to be- your future self.
This is the fun part. This is all about rewriting those toxic lies, into believable truths you WANT to believe. These are called replacement thoughts which I will teach you how access everytime a toxic thought comes into your head.
So now think of yourself as a self that is free of those toxic thoughts.
Notice each of those toxic thoughts you wrote down in the activity above and change them into positive, replacement thoughts instead, or what is actually TRUTH. Try to write the opposite of that lie you tell yourself, or at least change it into something nicer. Try to reach for the highest level of positive that you can believe in that self affirming statement. And make sure that your truth is written as a positive statement.
Describe yourself as if you didn’t have those toxic thoughts anymore.
Who do you want to be?
How do you want to feel?
Look at each toxic thought and translate them into a positive thought.
See my example here.
Step 5: It’s time to go to war on those thoughts. These are the only 2 tools you need to help you pave new pathways of thinking with aggression.
It’s time to stop falling victim to your thoughts. What causes most of our daily suffering, is based on fears that are not even real. If there is one thing that people who suffer anxiety are really good at, is worrying about things that never even happen.
Jennie Allen, in her book, ‘Get out of your own head’, explains that ’97 % of what we worry over is not much more than a fearful mind punishing you with exaggerations and mis-perceptions.’
So what should you do now that you know this?
It’s time to get aggressive on those negative thoughts. Know that you are fully equipped to be able to take on your negative thoughts. But that it is up to you to take serious action in changing how you think by actively deciding to take control of your toxic thinking and choosing to focus on positive thinking instead.
Remember, happiness is a mental habit- and like all habits to become a habit, it needs to be practiced. So here are the tools you need to PRACTICE mental happiness in order to rewire your brain to default to positive thoughts instead of reverting to negative or toxic thoughts.
Stand up to your thought bully and give it everything you’ve got to form those new neural pathways that direct your mind to think positive thoughts so you can feel better.
Tool no. 1: Positive Affirmations
Daily affirmations are simple, positive statements or mantras that have profound effects on both the conscious and subconscious mind. You can now take all of those positive thoughts you have written down in your future self and turn them into affirmations. These are the thoughts that you WANT to think. Create strong, positive self image programming statements and use these as your affirmations that you can refer to everyday. They usually start with, ‘I am..’ eg. ‘I am calm.’
Then practice playing them over and over and over again in your mind. The more you tell yourself something the more you will believe it. This literally forms new pathways in your brain. The more you use those pathways, the easier it is for your brain to go back there.
BUT WAIT: Before you do these…. I need to throw this small but all important word at you. And that word is…..
BELIEF!
We are all hypnotized into believing who we are or who we consider ourselves to be. And we act accordingly to the person whom we believe we are. eg. If you believe that you get overwhelmed when you don’t send an email to a client on time, then you WILL BE overwhelmed when you don’t send an email out on time. If you want to change your behavior you must first start with changing your self image and who you believe you are. Therefore you must convince yourself and truly believe that you are a calm person and it doesn’t bother you when you forget to send an email.
Here is how to create and use affirmations to embed your new self image into your subconscious mind. If you use these tools, I promise you will see a transformation in your thinking for good.
- Write them out or recite them frequently, every morning, every night just before bed or whenever you get a spare moment throughout the day.
Refer to my affirmation examples here.
- Use visual triggers to remind yourself of each affirmation. We have ours printed out and stuck next to the mirror in our bathroom. We see them and read over them every day while we brush our teeth. Just a few minutes a day is all it takes for your brain to read over them and embed them into your brain.
- Plant them in your subconscious mind during your sleep.We have recorded ourselves saying our affirmations with calm music in the background so we can listen to them at night before we go to sleep. This firmly plants these sentences we created into our subconscious and it is unbelievable how our brain pulls on those phrases when we need them. One of my affirmations is ‘I am calm when my children misbehave.’ Every time something happens with my children throughout the day, I can literally hear my voice inside my head as it recites that affirmation and reminds me to be calm. Even when my 3 year is screaming bloody murder in the supermarket.
Tool # 2: Visualise the positive
Your minds movie theatre
Humans are all wonderfully brilliant at visualising bad shit that will probably never happen. How often do you sit around in anxiety worrying about the future in a negative way?
Visualisation is the most powerful tool you can use to reprogram your brain. The basic principle here?
Stop visualising what you don’t want to happen and start visualising everything that you do want to happen.
Think about it. Why do we choose to dwell on whether or not the plane we are on is going to crash in the middle of the ocean instead of dwelling on the fact that we are heading to Hawaii for a wonderful family holiday?
Seriously which visualisation would you rather be a part of here?
A great way to do this is to create a movie theatre in your mind and practice thinking about who you want to be and what you want to look forward to. Play out being that person, put yourself in the frame, visualise like a mental rehearsal.and believe it to come true.
So now is the time to choose. How much do you want to break free from toxic thinking?
I cannot encourage anyone enough to do this sort of mental work. Creating positive affirmations and consistently visualising everything you DO want will override your negative thought process and allow you to be happier and live a life free from the shackles of negativity, anxiety, frustration, resentment and anger and lean you toward a more positive way of life.
If you take anything away from this, I hope it is this….
You always have a choice. Know that your thoughts do not control you. But YOU are in control of your thoughts.
Try to catch yourself before you go down those irrational rabbit holes of all the catastrophic things that you think could happen. Or before you spiral into untrue thoughts about things that have already happened. Stop throwing away your day to fear, sadness or any emotions for that matter that don’t serve you. We truly do have a choice whether we go into catastrophic thinking or not. Whether it’s about something big or just a glass of spilled milk. Ultimately it is up to YOU how you think, what you choose to dwell on and at the end of the day how how you FEEL.
With sincere kindness and understanding of what it is like to think toxic thoughts, let me tell you, YOU ARE WORTH IT!