The Quick Switch That Will Change Your Negative Thought Patterns
This Method Is Self-Proven, Works on my mind, Should work for you too!
I’ll be the first to admit that I have been a prisoner of my own mind for quite some time. It’s funny actually how long we can go thinking that our mind really knows what’s best for us. Most of us trust our minds to some degree because we couldn’t believe that our own mind could possibly be “out to get us” or “against us”
And the truth is… It’s really not…
BUT
There is something that you should know about your mind
It’s not here to make your dreams a reality, It’s not here to help you with your goals. In fact, it really doesn’t care whether you succeed or fail.
So what’s the point of it then?
To ensure your survival… That’s it….
Every thought, every story that you tell yourself, is designed to protect you from pain, or in extreme circumstances… death.
But here’s the good news…
The operating system of your mind is not “locked”, instead you can actually go in there and alter the programming yourself.
So why doesn’t everyone do this then?
Most people see their mind’s thoughts as absolute. In other words, they believe that their mind knows them better than anyone else can because it’s well… their mind!
I used to believe this as well but over time, the evidence from my past experiences has caused me to shift directions.
Why?
Because the greater majority of the time my mind presented me with its godly advice of “I know what’s best”, it led to me feeling worse overall because oftentimes it had me choose the easier path that was less risky and more protective, but less fulfilling.
Most people are not really aware of how their mind works, they’ve fallen victim to its “autopilot” functions and have settled with the belief of “this is just the way things are”
Although it may seem impossible to program the mind, it’s actually not as bad as it seems upfront. The key is realizing a few things first…
It’s not going to happen overnight
The goal is to be a realist, observe how your mind works, and see what your mind is actually trying to get you to do.
Once you realize the patterns, you can begin to change them.
I’ll give you a recent example from my personal library
The other day, I had my main daily goal of filming a YouTube video, but ended up getting distracted with other work that morning. As the afternoon arrived, I looked at the clock and saw it was already 1:30 PM.
“You’re so far behind”, my mind told me. But it wasn’t finished there.. Here’s what else my mind had to report:
You won’t have enough energy to finish the video because your energy has already peaked for the day
Things didn’t go according to plan today, accept the failure and try again tomorrow
If you start this project and don’t finish it, you will not have met your goal and you’ll feel even worse than you do now
You weren’t able to complete your full morning routine, so you aren’t set up to do your best work
You see, the mind loves drama; it especially loves stacking negative evidence on top of each other to further prove its point.
Why?
It doesn’t want you to take risks,
It doesn’t want you to venture into the unknown
It wants you to be absolutely certain of everything you’re doing so it will believe you are 100% protected
Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way and you can try telling your mind that but that question is… Will it listen?
In my experience, it hasn’t… So there’s only one other choice then. You can show your mind by proving it wrong and doing the thing anyway.
And that’s exactly what I did. I chose to disregard the “warnings” my mind was giving me and just chose to accept the challenge to work on my goal
And you know what?
I not only finished the video, but I was happy with the work I did!
So how was I able to detach myself from my mind’s negative thinking?
By realizing that the story my mind was telling myself was just an opinion, and not fact.
At the end of the day, you can choose whether to believe your mind, or not
It’s up to you to decide whether what your mind is saying to you is helpful or not
Think of your mind as the ultimate skeptic. You can gain it as an ally, but you will have to prove to it that you can do a better job at guiding your life than it can
The secret is, it’s really not that hard to prove this.
All you have to do is disagree with your mind and tell yourself a different story (The story you want to believe)
Over time, as you prove your mind wrong more and more, it will switch and have more confidence in your actions
The goal is to make your mind feel comfortable with trusting you
Most of us have heard the saying “You are not your mind”
How do we know this?
You are not your mind, because you can CHANGE your mind. So there must be something else in there.
Some call it: The Observer
So be the observer, and use that newfound knowledge to redirect your mind when it starts telling you stories that make you feel bad
Show your mind that you trust yourself and value its opinion, but will always end up doing what you know works best for you
The more you succeed with this, the more your mind will trust you
On the other side, if you choose not to do it, your mind will grow stronger in believing that you’re not capable of handling your own life, so it will work even harder to protect you from the things it believes are harming you.
Think of all the times you wanted to go do something and your mind stopped you. Now ask yourself. Was my mind’s reason for stopping me valid?
Most of the time you will realize that it wasn’t.
Now imagine if you instead looked at your mind like a friend instead of the “all knowing powerful wizard of Oz”
You see, a friend is still respected, but holds so much less power when it comes to you deciding what you’re going to do next in life.
A friend can sometimes know what’s best for you, but doesn’t know you better than you know yourself.
With this philosophy, you’re still in the driver’s seat and will always have the final say on all decisions made for your life.
When you make this shift, you’re not completely disregarding your mind, you’re still willing to hear it out. But you’re not willing to take its advice before putting it through some sort of analysis or questioning
They final goal here is to observe how your mind acts and what it says instead of just blindly listening to it every time it sends an alarming thought your way.
This is exactly the strategy that I’ve used to gain back control over my life.
QUICK RECAP
So real quick, here’s how you do this again. The next time your mind throws a negative thought at you, jump into “observer mode” and look at what’s happening from the outside.
Ask a few questions.
“What’s really going on here? Why is my mind suggesting this?”
Most of the time you will find it is just fear of the unknown or fear of wasting time doing an activity that your mind believes will not bring a high reward.
So it suggests something else instead that has proven to be a higher reward in the past. Usually, it’s suggestions are quick dopamine hits and easy feel good activities that may feel good initially, but leave you dissatisfied in the long run. Examples include
Netflix
Shopping
Video Games
Social Media
Eating High Fat, High Sugar Foods
Your mind doesn’t care about how you feel in the future. It just wants to feel safe and rewarded now. And it knows these things work, at least initially.
A smart person comes to discover that over time, these things do not bring lasting fulfillment and this is where you can make the conscious choice to overpower your mind and say something to it like:
“I may not feel as good initially writing this article as I would if I was eating popcorn and watching my favorite show on Netflix, but what I have come to realize is that I will feel A LOT better about myself afterwards and for a longer period of time”
Even if no one reads the article, I still feel fulfilled because I know that I did something that both expresses myself authentically and honors myself.
We are here on planet earth to do just that… Work that inspires us.
And you are rewarded automatically by the universe when you do this kind of work because it’s a form of helping yourself and others on their journey.
This is why you feel so good after you have accomplished something that you consider to be meaningful.
So grab this new mindset shift and give it a try today! You won’t believe how much better you’ll feel about your goals and what you really want to spend your time doing.
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