My life whizzes by, and most of the time I forget to process my emotions. I might have a negative thought, be aware of the negative thinking, and then I immediately try to calm myself down and get on the other side of the negative thought as fast as possible so that I can get things done. I have work to do, tasks to accomplish. I recognize that dwelling on my negative thinking just slows me down and wastes mental energy. So I actively try to get over the hurdle and get on with my life.

The result is that I do not spend much, if any time, processing my negative thoughts. The cause of negative feelings are beliefs that are not consistent with the facts of reality. Your mind recognizes the difference between what “should” be happening and what actually is happening. The greater the difference between OUGHT and IS, the more cognitive dissonance is felt emotionally. Close inspection of these untrue beliefs is the solution to negative thinking. A person can revise their beliefs by investigating them.

To start your investigation you have to catch the negative belief first. You need a pretty good butterfly net to catch your negative beliefs. To catch a negative belief you need:

1. A ubiquitous belief capturing tool like a notebook, 3×5 cards, a day planner, a palm organizer or a voice recorder
2. A pen, pencil, or pointer

You need to become very sensitive to the negative emotions in your mind. The negative emotions should trigger you to write down the negative thoughts or beliefs.

Write down the thoughts or beliefs immediately. You brain naturally gets distracted easily, and before you know it, your brain is working another thought train.  

The next step is to schedule time in your day to process these negative beliefs. You can schedule every Saturday morning for this purpose. Or you can try every day after dinner. The point is to put this appointment in your personal calendar.  

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.