3 steps to letting go of negativity forever
You’re really happy, your day is going great, you feel confident and ready to tackle anything. Then you remember something someone said or something that happened at work and just like that your good mood turns sour. Negativity can be like a vortex. When you give into it, it sucks your positive feelings and takes you down a spiral of negative emotions - resentment, anger, sadness, jealousy, regret, guilt, and so on.
If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re not alone.
80% of the thoughts in our brain are negative and 95% are repetitive. That means that it’s harder for a positive thought to stick in our minds than it is for a negative thought to stick. This leads us to becoming addicted to the negative thoughts, making it increasingly easier to give into them over time. Eventually it becomes habitual to slip right into a negative mindset. If anything that you’ve just read resonates with you, it doesn’t make you a negative person, it makes you human. In fact, many psychologists state there is actually positive intention behind why we do this. When we allow ourselves to feel a negative feeling, we are trying to solve the problem that’s occurred in the past by repeating the problem over and over again in our minds - thus trying to come up with a better outcome than what took place. So our brains are just in problem-solving mode. The issue, is obviously that there’s no logical sense in repeating a past problem in your mind since you can’t change the outcome. The best you can do is find a lesson from the situation and use it to help you move forward.
How do you do this?
Here are a few ways you can quickly let go of negativity so that you can move forward more quickly into a positive mindset:
Be aware: The first step to letting go of negative thoughts is to be aware of when you are giving into them. The moment you realize you’ve been thinking about a negative situation for more than a few minutes - STOP. Literally press the brakes on your mind and take a few mental steps back. You need to take yourself out of the spiral in order to be able to reflect objectively on it.
Find the lesson: Once you’ve taken a step back, you can objectively look at the situation and ask yourself why it keeps coming up for you. Are you still upset about the situation? If so, what can you do to soothe your pain? If it has to do with someone else - talk to them about it. If it’s too far in the past, the other person involved is no longer in your life or you’ve already spoken to them about it and it still comes up for you. Write down your thoughts. Once you see your thoughts on paper, separate the story from the facts. What actually happened (a black and white picture) vs. how you feel about it. This will allow you to remove feelings of blame and resentment and objectively see the story that you’re telling yourself. It may even allow you to dive deeper into why that story keeps coming up for you.
Close the door: Once you’ve found the lesson, it’s important to close the door. I’ve been guilty of reliving past situations far too often and have learnt that it only keeps me stuck in the past and causes me the most damage. So firmly close the door once you’ve found the lesson. once you’ve found your peace with a situation, there’s no point letting it control your mind and emotions. Be proud of yourself for dealing with a tough situation in a healthy way.
Negativity is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s often there to teach us something about ourselves. This is where the exercise of separating the story from the facts will really serve you. Everything in life is based on our perceptions. No matter how much we believe our story to be true, we tend to colour facts with insecurities, resentment, blame and other negative thoughts. Doing this exercise will allow you to see the situation for what it is and deal with it objectively. You may even find patterns in your story that allow you to dive deeper into the root of why something bothers you so much. In just these three steps you’ll be on your way of letting go of negativity forever.