A simple technique to neutralize your negative thoughts

[javamannen2]

Here is a simple technique to neutralize your negative thoughts.

Suppose you just caught yourself thinking a negative thought.

I'm stupid.

It's a good thing you noticed this thought, that's the first step to changing it. But what do most people do when they catch themselves thinking a negative thought? They begin arguing with themselves.

No I'm not.

Yes you are.

And on and on.
But there's another way.

Imagine everything you think is instantly transcribed into a mental word processor. The thing with this word processor is that there is no delete key. What you have thought, you have thought, no matter how much you wish you hadn't.
OK, so you just thought this negative thought. Now look at your mental screen... What is the last sentence written?

I'm stupid.

So what can you do, really? The sentence is already on the screen, and there's no delete!
Well, put it in quotes! (fortunately this word processor has a quote key )

"I'm stupid."

What's the difference? The difference is, now that it's a quoted statement, you can refer to it and determine its validity. E.g. by adding:

...is a false statement.

to it, you get:

"I'm stupid." is a false statement.

Now you have neutralized the negative thought. You haven't argued with yourself. You haven't contradicted yourself. You haven't censored any previous thoughts. You have created a single congruent, positive statement.

I like to imagine commander Data from Star Trek saying "...is an incorrect statement" or "...evaluates to FALSE" or something like that, in his usual analytical non-attached manner, where he is referring to the the negative thought I just had ('nt ).

[Michael Howe]

A nice updated version of how to overcome/remove negativity.

I love the Data bit. Brilliant! Now I'll have to try it!

[Sivodna]

Maybe Spock does something similar too

Good post. I'll remember that.

[daredevil83]

Very interesting, thanks!

When you're aware that your thoughts aren't true, or even false (they simply exists and allow you to get what you want or not), it is rather simple to deattach from them. All you have to do is to convince yourself that it is true - your method is a good reminder:-).

[garentee]

Been chewing on some limiting beliefs lately and just this morning realized just how much power they can exert over our lives. This exercise seems like a good way to get on the right road of changing some of those beliefs.

[Foggy]

I tried this technique last night to see how it worked. Surprisingly, it was actually pretty effective. Thank you for showing us this!

[javamannen2]

Another approach is to use the internet forum as a metaphor for your thought process.

If you catch yourself just having had a semi-unconscious negative thought (or a whole series of them), imagine that you've just written a first draft for a post in an internet forum and pressed the "Preview Post" button. But this wasn't what you really wanted to say, was it? Don't worry, you haven't pressed the "Submit" button yet! Now that you're more conscious, you can go back and review and mentally edit the "message", i.e. the thought(s), and only "submit" when it's in line with your preferred belief system.

There is an almost infinite number of variations on some basic techniques to improve one's thought patterns, and I think a lot of people after some experimentation come up with their own unique method. I encourage you to post your own techniques in this thread!