Yesterday was one of those days where I was stuck in some negative thinking cycles. It went on for most of the day and only started to ease up when I took some action on the things I was stressing over.
This morning, I remembered how this kind of thing was covered in a book called Relentless Solution Focus. The book talks about ways to overcome these negative thought loops.
The first step is to identify them, which sounds obvious, but sometimes we don’t even realize we’re in a negative thought pattern. The body will usually let you know. When you start feeling bad, tense, or any of the things that come with bad moods, depression, anger, etc., that’s your cue to check on your thoughts.
One of the keys they teach is to not let it go for more than ten seconds once you identify it, because negative thoughts breed more and more the longer they run. To stop them, ask yourself: What’s one positive action I can take on this?
Just the act of thinking of solutions will start making you feel better. If you stay with it, you’ll shift into a different kind of thought pattern. Rather than the negative spiral, you’ll be focused on coming up with solutions.
It’s a simple shift, but on days like yesterday, it can be the difference between feeling stuck and actually moving forward.
— Bus