Our thoughts, with their intertwined emotions, have a powerful effect on our overall health and happiness. That’s why it’s so important to detox our bodies and minds of negative thoughts and their very negative outcomes.

You are what you think

“As a man thinks, so he is”, still rings true today! This truth is backed up by research findings that have shown that just seven to ten minutes a day of healthy, positive thinking results in positive improvements in your happiness, health and peace of mind. Unfortunately the opposite is also true and an undisciplined mind, filled with a continuous stream of thoughts, worries, fears and distorted perceptions, will trigger all sorts of degenerative processes in your mind and body.

How to remedy the situation? It all starts with awareness and the desire to break old negative and toxic thought and other lifestyle habits and consciously create new, positive ones. Here’s how…

Ten strategies to reduce negative thinking

  1. Make a choice, a choice for change. Even though you may by nature be a melancholic, negative or “glass half empty” thinker, you have a powerful brain that can accommodate and process any new habit and thought pattern you choose to follow.
  2. Start the day with a positive thought. Even if you do not feel like it, force yourself to think it read it, listen to it and say it out loud.
  3. Take every negative thought captive. When it starts emerging, stop it in its tracks, catch it and inspect it. A negative thought is often not the truth at all and too often only what you perceive as the truth! Dr Caroline Leaf has proven once and for all that “taking wrong thoughts and replacing them with truth will physically erase that thought or memory and its associated emotions in the brain and will change the physical structure of the brain to accommodate the true replacement thought and emotion”.
  4. Zip it. It may sound silly, but whenever you want to say something negative, put your hand over your mouth and zip it! Do not speak of the fear or bleakness of what seems so glaringly obvious to you but first see if you can find anything positive about the situation. If not, rather shut up!
  5. Set boundaries. Move away from the things and the people who threaten your efforts at being more positive. Embrace and surround yourself with positive thinkers and speakers and those who unconditionally love you. Take control of your happiness by not allowing others to steer your feelings, thoughts and emotions.
  6. Stop harking back to and worrying about past mistakes, injustices and stressful events. You can’t change your past but you can change your present and future by forgiving and moving on. Forgiving is easier than you think, you don’t have to feel anything − just say it out loud and have done with it. Repeat if you have to until you are completely free.
  7. Accept your own imperfections and stop trying to be perfect. Stop the guilty thoughts and worries, all the things you should and must do or be. You are never going to be perfect, so step down, join the human race, don’t worry and be happy!
  8. Express your emotions, don’t repress them. Deal with negative issues, thoughts and emotions and then leave them behind. Always remind yourself that you are not a helpless victim but have the ability to control your thoughts and reactions.
  9. Fight fear like the plague. Believe it or not but according to research findings we are actually wired for love (positivity) and fear (negativity) is something we have to “learn” to do. Fear is at the root of stress and its many negative outcomes. Words are powerful so face your fear, speak to it and command it to back down..
  10. Lighten up, smell the roses, play with your kids, exercise and eat the right food.

 

Sources

 

Leaf, C. Scientific FAQs. Retrieved from: http://drleaf.com/about/scientific-faqs/
Leaf, C. 2011. You are what you think. Retrieved from: http://drleaf.com/blog/you-are-what-you-think-75-98-of-mental-and-physical-illnesses-come-from-our-thought-life/
Mitchell, S. How to detox your brain. Retrieved from: http://www.johnburkeonline.com/detox-brain/
Shriver, M. Five ways to detox your negative thoughts. Retrieved from: http://mariashriver.com/blog/2014/05/5-ways-to-detox-your-negative-thoughts-dr-jaime-kulaga/