Having a positive attitude is important when it comes to improving your mental heath, but it can be difficult to push through negative thoughts. No one is immune to negative emotions – they can occur very suddenly, and in the most inappropriate situations. These emotions can also have an impact on work, studying, and our relationships with colleagues, friends, family, and loved ones. To keep these from becoming a problem, it’s useful to spend some time learning how you can get a handle on your negative emotions.
Luckily, there are plenty of tricks and techniques out there that you can use to overcome unpleasant thoughts. Writing has proven to be especially effective because it provides you with a way to release your emotions and deal with them in a more positive, efficient way. Since writing is a way of visualizing our thoughts, this tool can be useful in overcoming negative emotions and even helping us work out potential solutions to any problems.
Write down a list of things that make you upset/angry in one column, and opposite each of them write down things that make you feel happy.
There’s probably a lot more in your life for you to feel happy about, and seeing it presented in a list like this can help your brain move past the negativity to see what else there is. Focus on those positive things and pick a couple of them to experience today – go for a walk with a friend, spend some time with a hobby you enjoy, or just take a long, hot bath. Once you can see how the positive outweighs the negative, it’s easier to move on.
Write down what you’re anxious or furious about, go outside and take a deep breath, then look at your list again and write how your feelings have changed.
Once you’ve been able to express your feelings, it’s a good idea to put it aside for a while and do something else. Now that you’ve put it down on paper, your brain can let go of some of the negativity surrounding the situation, and you can come back in to look at it again with a fresh perspective. Often, you’ll find that whatever was upsetting you before isn’t upsetting you anymore. If you do still feel upset, you might discover that expressing yourself and then revisiting your problem gives you some ideas on how you might want to tackle it.
Try to describe your emotions in writing in a detailed manner. Put as much description into your writing as you can to really purge yourself of those negative emotions. Be as clear and concise as possible, and don’t leave anything out. You want this exercise to give you a feeling of release, so don’t cut it edit yourself or cut it short. Write what you feel, and mean it.
The next time you feel upset, look at this description and see if you’re feeling the same way. Maybe you can see some consistencies and look at making changes in your life to avoid experiencing further negative emotions.
See Also: 7 Simple Ways To Overcome Negative Thinking & Set Yourself Up To Win This Year
After a day at work, write a brief story and use yourself and your problem as a basis to construct the main character. Then build a plot in which this character will solve a problem; this story must have a happy ending.
Visualization is a great way to get you moving forward on the right path. By creatively plotting a positive solution to a problem for your main character, you can give yourself a bit of inspiration to apply some of the same techniques in your own life. See the fictionalized version of yourself enjoy a happy ending, and then you can take steps to achieve the same thing for real. It’s a nice bit of encouragement to get you working towards making some positive, healthy changes.
Vent your frustrations on paper, then tear it up, throw it away, or burn it. This follows some of the same principles as the third step – except that instead of revisiting this description later, you’ll never see it again. Be detailed and specific, get to the heart of whatever is causing you grief, and then watch it disappear forever. It’s a great exercise in learning to let go, and will help you move past whatever situation was causing you negative feelings in the first place. Get rid of it and move on. You’ll feel a lot better.
The important thing with any of these techniques is to get writing as soon as possible, so you can deal with your negative emotions before you spend too much time dwelling on them. The longer you let these unpleasant thoughts control your feelings, the more difficult it is to overcome them – and the longer you wait, the greater the risk of having these emotions negatively impact the important relationships in your life.
See Also: How to Control Your Emotions in Any Situation
Throughout history, great writers have used their own negative thoughts and experiences to influence beautiful poetry and classic novels – giving these authors a feeling of relief and self-satisfaction and sharing brilliant pieces of literature with the world. Why not apply that same principle to your own life, and experience some of that relief for yourself? The next time you feel a negative thought or emotion creep in, grab a pen and a piece of paper and get writing.
The post How To Overcome Negative Emotions Using 5 Writing Techniques appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
This modern and wonderful studio, covering an area of 500 square feet, forms part of an extension added to a home by Carney Logan Burke Architect in Jackson, Wyoming, USA. The home uses adobe – a natural and sustainable construction practice that consists of a mixture of moist earth, sand, gravel, and clay – for its walls, concrete for its floors, and copper for its roofing, creating a unique space..
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💙 Slow Burn on 500px by Thorsten Scheuermann, Kirkland,… http://ift.tt/2cKpwEX
You’re reading 7 Things Highly Resilient People Don’t Do, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Have you seen how some people end up being terribly depressed during tough times while others pick themselves up beautifully? The difference is resilience.
Resilience is the ability to bounce back after a major adversity or tragedy.
All of us experience pain. The pain might come from the loss of a loved one, a period of illness, personal conflicts or business failures or any other kind of trauma.
In our attempt to lessen the pain, we sometimes turn to unhealthy behaviours. We choose to sympathise ourselves or envy others.
Let me tell you a short story.
As a young girl, Wilma Rudolph was stuck with a severe illness that left her paralysed. Her doctors said she would never be able to put her foot on the earth again. However, with an unwavering dream of becoming a runner, not only did she learn to walk again but also went on to win three gold medals in 100-meter and 200-meter race during 1960 Olympics.
That’s how powerful a resilience attitude can be. So, let’s look at seven things that highly resilient people don’t do:
Research has shown that having social support is an innumerable advantage during tough times. Instead of facing it alone, it is easy to cope with a failure or setback when we have the support of our peers, community or family.
Unfortunately, people shun themselves away and lock themselves up during bad times. It is totally counter-intuitive to recovery. Resilient people are not afraid of asking for help or being a little vulnerable.
Everyone’s life has certain aspects that are out of control. Resilient people accept this inevitable fact instead of wasting time and energy on things that are out of their control.
We cannot change or control what has happened to us. The past is unchangeable. Instead of brooding over it, resilient people focus on how to move forward.
Somehow, Resilient people have a better endurance to pain. They choose to learn a lesson from the incident instead of letting the situation to make them feel hopeless.
Trying too hard to avoid a painful moment or pretend it doesn’t exist is not a good idea. We create more suffering by not accepting the reality.
Tragedies and painful situations happen to almost all people. During such times, it is natural to feel dejected and be upset. Even highly resilient people face these situations but they don’t allow themselves to be stuck in such a negativity for longer periods.
They look for ways to come out of the situation and move forward.
Hard times sometimes destroy people’s self-esteem. Many go blaming themselves for almost everything that happens to them. This is a huge challenge.
Sometimes you may be responsible for a failure, other times it may have nothing to do with you. Resilient people understand the difference between blame and responsibility. They do take responsibility for their actions but don’t waste their time in blaming themselves.
Weak people base their decisions on a single bad incident and tend to quit their goals or shut themselves off completely. However, highly resilient people understand that it’s okay to have tough times. After all, expecting life to be wonderful all the time is foolish.
Self-pity is a destructive mindset. Dwelling on negative events and feeling excessively sorry for yourself is the surest way to misery. While it’s totally okay to cry our hearts out, feel hopeless and lost, but you should be able to shake it off at one point and move forward.
Resilient people don’t allow self-pity to creep into their lives. They take responsibility for their own well-being and move forward.
Now, here’s the good news. Decades of research says that resilience is a quality that can be developed. And there are scientifically proven methods to become resilient.
These methods are covered in Chapter One of my free email course, 7 Proven Strategies of Enormously Successful People. Along with resilience, you will also learn other methods of massively successful people and lots of free worksheets.
Are you ready to live a successful life?
Amy inspires readers at BrainyOwls, by writing on self-improvement and productivity. Check out her free email course, that unlocks the secret to massive success.
You’ve read 7 Things Highly Resilient People Don’t Do, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
New York City – New York – USA (by Paul Nicholson)
This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted and shaky – that’s called liberation. ~Pema Chodron
It’s human nature to desire comfort and security. Unfortunately, that tendency is what causes most of our problems.
We humans tend not to like uncertainty, discomfort, fear, instability, drastic change or chaos. That’s natural and understandable, but our habit of running to the secure and comfortable leads to difficulties:
And so on: financial problems, health problems, work problems, relationship problems, happiness problems all stem from this running from discomfort, uncertainty, instability to comfort and security.
What if we were able to try a different way?
What if we explored the Way of Openness?
It could open up a world of change and possibilities for us, freedom from our addictions and procrastinations, our lashings out and our fears.
The opposite of running to comfort and security is … not running.
Instead, it is:
The Way of Openness is about embracing and welcoming and being curious about whatever is in front of us, staying in touch with our feelings, and being open to the constantly changing nature of what comes at us.
This Way is not easy, but neither is the life of running from discomfort and uncertainty, as we’ve seen.
This Way takes practice. It takes courage. It takes love.
But the result, I’ve been finding (and I’m still a beginner), is that you are capable of any kind of change, that you can open your heart to people in a way you never were able to before, and you realize you’re free from having to run, to constantly distract yourself and find something to keep you busy.
So how do we cultivate this Way of Openness?
This is a lifelong practice, to be honest. But here are some things you can practice — pick one each day instead of trying to do them all at once, and constantly come back to practices you’ve tried before:
I’d say that’s a good start. You could spend a year practicing with these ideas. Once you’re good at them, find other areas where you’re blocked or holding back, and practice opening up there too.
In the end, this is about whether we want to go through life running from what we find and seeking comfort, or whether we’re going to find the courage to be open to everything, to finally be free of the running.
In the end, we find that there was nothing to be afraid of after all. It’s a wonderful place to be, this changing, uncertain, uncomfortable and miraculous world.
Sig Nordal 