It starts with just a thought or a feeling. Or maybe with a sentence spoken by someone else.
And then it starts to drag you down.
Into feeling sorry for yourself, worried or into thinking “what’s the point of taking any action at all?” as you walk around in a funk with your own personal rain cloud above your head.
Negativity that wells up inside of you or in the world around you can quickly become toxic and hold you back from living the life you want.
So in this week’s post I want to share 12 tips and habits that have helped me – and still help me – to prevent and to overcome my own negative thoughts but also the negativity that’s sometimes around me.
1. When you’re in what seems like a negative situation, find what’s good or helpful.
If you’ve had a setback, stumbled or failed
…show more content…
Replace the negativity in your surroundings.
What you let into your mind in your everyday life will have big effect on you. So start questioning what you allow in.
Ask yourself:
What are the top 3 sources of negativity in my life?
It could be people, websites, magazines, podcasts, music and so on.
Then ask yourself:
What can I do to spend less time with these 3 sources this week?
If you can’t find ways to do that right now for all three of them then take a smaller step and focus on doing that with just one of these sources.
Then spend the time you’ve freed up this week on more positive sources and people that are already in your life or that you want to explore and perhaps make a new part of it.
5. Stop making mountains out of molehills.
To stop a small negative thought from becoming a big monster in your mind confront it early. You can do that by for example using tip #3 in this article.
Or you can zoom out. Do that by asking yourself a question like:
Will this matter in 5 years? Or even 5 weeks?
This answer is likely in most cases that it won’t and that you were only starting to make a mountain out of a molehill (or out of plain air).
6. Let it out and talk it