Negative thinking gets wired into your brain and diminishes your brain’s ability to think, reason, and form memories. Here are 15 effective ways that can help you remove negative thoughts from your mind.
How to Stop Negative Thinking: 15 Tips to Overcome Negative Thought Patterns
Do you suffer from negative thoughts? Are you messing around with frustration, laziness, low self-confidence, and underestimating your personal abilities? Do you feel like your life is getting worse and negative thoughts are making you less motivated to work?
Negative thinking is like heavy dark clouds that obscure the sun and the sky and makes you look at life with a pessimistic and negative outlook, but fortunately, you have the ability to remove the clouds and restore the sun and blue sky to your life, by getting rid of negative thinking.
There is nothing better than to learn from the experiences of others in this field, and know how to deal with these negative thoughts and feelings and how to overcome them once and for all.
The more you allow negative thinking to control your life and allow negative thoughts to occupy your mind, the more negative your life will become, and negativity will become a habit in your life. Therefore, you need to immediately learn how to get rid of negative thinking. Sometimes if negative thinking is controlling your life, then you may need some professional help, but sometimes getting rid of negative thinking takes a little effort to change what you think and this can make big changes in your life.
In this article, you will find 15 simple and easy tips that you can use to stop negative thinking and overcome negative thought patterns.
15 Simple Ways to Remove Negative Thoughts from Your Mind
Negative thoughts can enter your mind even without clear reasons, so the study developed a number of ways to help us get rid of negative thinking. These 15 effective ways can help you get rid of negative thoughts and feelings.
1. Surround yourself with positive people:
When you’re in a negative mood, try to sit with a cheerful, energetic, positive friend.
Talk about anything you want, except your problems, try not to convey your own problems and your mood to him.
Nobody likes to listen to problems. If you talk about your problems, people will avoid sitting with you, and this may lead to more unhappiness. When you talk a lot about your problems, they will become a negative habit that accompanies you most of the time.
So, try to meet people in a positive way, and try to be influenced by their mood and energy. Try to do things and behave in the same way as your positive friends, in order to become more positive and get rid of negative thinking.
2. Change your body language:
Body language is one of the most important and helpful tools for a person to express whatever is on his mind.
So have you ever had to stop and watch your body language? Body language is represented in the movement of the hands, eyes, and facial expressions, as well as the way of sitting.
You can tell a lot about how a person feels through their body language. Negative body language is either a conscious or unconscious expression of nervousness, sadness, anger, boredom, impatience, or lack of confidence.
It’s normal in bad situations to have negative body language but try to change your body language for the better. This will help you get rid of negative thoughts and feelings.
3. Try to avoid overthinking:
Avoid as much as you can repeat negative thoughts and events in your mind. The more you think about your negative experiences, the more your mind becomes attached to them and therefore you will not be able to get rid of negative thinking.
If something bad happens, do not try to focus your thinking on this bad event for an exaggerated time, and therefore scientists consider that excessive thinking tires the mind and brings negativity most of the time.
When this happens try to involve yourself in some activities that you love, try to physical activity, it will help you shift your attention to other things. You can also go for a walk, swim, go to the gym, or fix anything at home.
4. Don’t act like a victim:
Don’t act like a victim, instead, try to take responsibility for the status quo. Don’t feel low self-esteem or weakness, no one can belittle you unless you let them, no one will make you feel like a victim unless you let them.
Try to stand up and trust yourself and know that you have the right to happiness, self-respect, and success like everyone else, and that will only happen by stopping negative thinking.
5. Always be nice to people:
Try to be nice to people while greeting them and sitting and chatting with them for a few moments, it will help you get rid of negative thinking.
For a few moments, and sometimes for much longer, treating others kindly will make them treat you the same way, and this will make you feel good and happy, and in turn, become more positive.
6. Don’t use words that break your courage:
It is important for you to write down the negative thoughts that dominate your mind because this will make you discover after a while the reasons behind your mind’s tendency to think negatively. Writing down negative thoughts is an important way to discover the cause of negative thinking.
Be a little more aware of the words you use when talking to yourself or people. Avoid words like “cannot,” “impossible,” “difficult as much as possible,” and do not use words that indicate weakness, and your lack of self-esteem.
7. Try to smile more often:
Smiling can be difficult, if you are angry, unhappy, or depressed, however, even if you smile when you are completely unsatisfied, the smile will have a good effect on you.
Scientifically smiling sends blood and oxygen to your face, and this improves how you feel. Try to smile more often.
If you look around, you will always find reasons to smile and get rid of negative thinking.
If you think it would be embarrassing to smile when you are not in the mood to smile, you can force yourself to smile in front of the mirror when you are alone, it will help you change your mood and relieve your stress.
8. Set a positive goal for yourself:
If you want to remove negative thinking from your mind, set a positive goal for yourself. A positive goal will give your life a good direction, and boost your motivation and self-confidence. Setting positive goals is not difficult, but it does require persistence and perseverance.
The lack of a goal in your life leaves ample room for negative thoughts to creep into your mind, but if your mind is focused on achieving a noble goal in life, the space for negative thinking narrows a lot.
9. Be your own best friend:
Developing the skills to be your best friend means you can trust your own judgment and be in your comfort zone when you need advice or support.
Consider what your best friend is going to say to you and then tell yourself what you want to hear.
Being your best friend can be a great way to stop negative thinking, feelings of loneliness, instability, and insecurity in your life.
If you learn how to be your best friend, you can identify your abilities and strengths and constantly trust yourself and solve any issues you might encounter in your life.
10. Keep yourself busy when alone:
Overthinking makes you miss the important people around you. If your mind is busy, it will make you avoid negative thoughts. Anything that catches your eye may help, including arranging your books in alphabetical order, gardening, learning a language, painting, drawing, or calculating your annual expenses. This way, you will gradually control your thoughts, until you reach your goal.
11. Develop the habit of sleeping better at night:
The mind, like all other parts of the body, needs rest, calm, and relaxation in order to continue to function. Excessive thoughts and racing in your mind may lead to a lack of control over the thoughts that take place inside it, especially negative thoughts.
A good night’s sleep makes the mind rest, and this leads to less distraction in thinking. Organizing daily life activities makes you psychologically comfortable and aware of what you are going to accomplish.
12. Motivate yourself to make exercise a habit:
There are many exercises that can help you get rid of your negative thoughts and feelings. Exercising is one of the ways that helps to get rid of excessive thinking, as walking or running helps to get rid of all annoying thoughts, and focus on body exercises.
Exercise increases the secretion of endorphins and serotonin, which help reduce anxiety and depression. When you focus on your exercise, it will take negative thoughts out of your mind.
When practicing yoga, playing volleyball, or other different sports, a person will not have room and space for negative thoughts and obsessions. Rather, he will focus all his attention on the body, which is why it is recommended to join a gym, learn to swim, or walk long distances.
13. Make a habit of reading books:
Reading books allows you to feel what the characters in the story feel, which in turn makes you more empathetic with people in real life, and you become more aware and alert to the lives of others.
Reading inspirational quotes always changes the mood for the better, inspires you, motivates you, and expands your mind. It will be useful to read some quotes in the morning and in the evening, or even write your favorite quotes in your notebook or on your cell phone, it will help you get rid of negative thinking.
You can also read some Quranic verses that will make your mind clearer and help you get rid of negative thoughts that revolve around your head.
14. Try watching a comedy movie:
Movies can have a significant impact on people’s beliefs and stereotypes, change attitudes towards certain groups of people, and lead to the formation of new opinions on different issues.
Watching a comedy movie will shift your mind from thinking about your problems to thinking about something funny and entertaining.
While watching the movie, try to focus on its events and listen to it well, as this will get you out of thinking about anything that bothers you.
15. Change your way of thinking:
Getting used to one way of thinking may cause boredom, especially if this way of thinking does not lead to solutions to the problem and thus results in negative thoughts.
In order to get rid of negative thinking and make a positive change in your life, the person must have an aspect of innovative thinking. Everyone is born with some specific types of traits and skills. So, use your ability to innovate new ideas and the ability to face challenges and find solutions to them, and thus move from negative situations to positive ones that have a great impact on the personality.
When a person is dominated by negative thoughts, his life is colored in one color and he does not find time in his life for creativity. So, renew your ideas to get creative ideas that change the course of your life and try to write these ideas on paper so that they become a goal that you seek to reach, as creativity destroys boredom.
