How to break the cycle of negative thoughts

Sometimes what is holding you back from pursuing your dream is pessimism. A pessimist always has the feeling that things will go wrong. He always dwells on the negative part of a situation rather than the positive part. Most times his fears cause him to act in harmony with his beliefs and they become self-fulfilling prophecies.

How can you break this cycle of negative thoughts? You need to learn to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. You have to learn to be aware of your inner dialogue - the thoughts you have about yourself and what you are doing. When you start to doubt yourself, listen for a moment to that little negative inner voice. Whose voice is it really? Could it be something someone had told you about yourself? Tell yourself, this is not my true voice. Then start to challenge it or just plainly ignore it. When doubts such as; ‘can I really do this? Other people are better, smarter, or more worthy than me. What will other people think if I do or say this? Success is for others, not for me’, creeps up, try to catch yourself entertaining these faulty dialogues and say STOP. Then replace such thought with the exact positive opposite and believe it. When you are running and your mind goes ‘man, this is too hard, I want to stop and go watch TV'. Learn to recognize this as a negative or faulty inner dialogue and tell yourself something like ‘come on man, I can do this’. Here is a nice trick that could change everything in your life. Imagine that a negative thought is a bug. Vigilantly be on the lookout for these bugs. When you catch one, mentally stomp on it. Squash it and kill it dead. Then replace it with a positive one.

Start priming your mind with ‘able words’ before you start each day. Write down all kinds of positive characteristics, whether you think you have them or not. You could start with these; strength, dignity, calmness, intelligence, humor, generosity, quick wittiness, charisma, attractive, approachability, popularity, determination, and so on. Take a moment writing them down each day then run your eyes up and down the list. It doesn’t matter if it is a similar list each day. Take some time to really reflect on what each word means to you. Do these before you go out every day? You will be amazed how doing this exercise will powerfully prime your unconscious mind.

More than just thinking positively, you have to act. Action is actually the key to developing self-confidence. It’s one thing to learn to think positively but when you start acting on it; you change yourself, one action at a time. You are what you do, so if you change what you do, you change yourself. Act in a positive way. Take action instead of telling yourself you can’t. Talk to people in a positive way and put some energy into your action. You will soon start to notice a difference.