A negative comment may be enough to ruin your day, but a doubt, if left unchecked, is enough for you to cancel plans, end relationships, change jobs, living situations, and more.
In this post, we’ll explore what negative thoughts actually are, how they arise, and how to stop them.
Table of Contents
How Negative Thoughts Arise
Thoughts are a form of energy.
When positive and uplifting, this energy can guide you and the people around you toward higher purpose in life. When the same energy is violent, abusive and full of malice, it can drag you and the people around you down.
However, this is an intentional use of the energy of thought.
Negative thoughts rarely come with our permission. Rather they seem to exist whether we want them to or not.
We’ll look at 3 different origins of negative thoughts and how to manage them.
Thoughts that Linger in Space
These thoughts come from your environment and to identify them, you’ll notice you generally have the same types of thoughts around a certain person or in a certain place.
For example, if someone in your network circle is generally very agitated, you may find yourself becoming agitated and irritable in their company for seemingly no reason. In this case, their vibrations are affecting you and the negative thoughts that may be arising in your mind are coming from this person’s agitation.
If you always feel stressed out when visiting a certain place, that stress is not originating from inside you, it is associated with that place.
Conditioned Thoughts
Conditioned thoughts go deeper than thoughts that linger in space.
These thoughts are a product of environments you’ve grown up in and lived in, for example, your childhood home or lack thereof, your schooling environment, and the society you were raised in.
All these environments had associated hierarchical structures, dogmas, and beliefs that indoctrinated you, created limiting beliefs and influenced your mind in subtle ways.
This can look like not believing you are worthy of love, believing a particular religion or way of life is superior, or that the purpose of life is to be rich, etc.
Thoughts that Arise Within Us
There are two types of thoughts that arise within you, voluntary and involuntary.
Voluntary thoughts arise as a genuine reaction to your external environment.
Involuntarily thoughts, on the other hand, arise from deep-seated stress, unprocessed trauma, and self-limiting beliefs.
These thoughts are tied to conditioned thoughts because they come from past external events that left a deep imprint on your consciousness; something in your environment, at some point in time, created a stress response in your system that was left unprocessed and became trauma.
This trauma exacerbated the limiting beliefs and patterns that were already embedded into your environment; today this is called generational trauma.
The negative thoughts that arise from these traumas are a form of stress release.
How Negative Thoughts Affect your Life
Thoughts flow in a cycle.
Most of us are unaware of the traumas that we carry with us from childhood.
These traumas throw up a continuous stream of negative thoughts. If you engage with a thought (either negatively or positively), it will remain in your mind.
Resistance can look like fighting the narrative of the thought, ‘He’s ugly. No, he’s not. I’m terrible for thinking such a thing. He’s actually quite handsome. I like him.’
Agreeing with a thought can look like, ‘She’s amazing. I wish I could be like her. I’ll never be as good as her. I’m terrible for thinking poorly of her. I should apologize to her. I bet she hates me.’
In both cases, you are not letting go of the thought.
Intense resistance or identification with a thought ensnares you. When a thought repeats over and over, ‘I’m terrible, I’m terrible, I’m terrible,’ it becomes a pattern, a belief and ultimately, a part of who you are.
Once a thought becomes a self-limiting belief, it begins to create its own set of negative thoughts.
Negative Thoughts can Alter Your Perception
You perceive the world through the lens of your mind.
If your mind is bogged down by negative thoughts, beliefs, and misconceptions about the world around you, this becomes the basis of your reality.
You will not perceive situations, events and people as they are, but rather through the distorted lens of your mind.
How to Stop Negative Thoughts
Now that you have a solid understanding of where thoughts come from and the different types of thoughts, you can actively manage and stop negative thoughts.
The first step to learning how to stop negative thoughts is to raise your level of consciousness and begin to observe the mind. Then, once you’ve recognized a thought as recurring, you’ll be able to investigate and take the necessary steps to stop that particular negative thought.
Thoughts that Linger in Space
These thoughts have an easy solution.
Once you’ve identified that a certain place or the company of certain people brings up negative thoughts and emotions, you can limit, reduce, or stop contact altogether. This will effectively stop negative thoughts that are stemming from this association.
Conditioned Thoughts
Conditioned thoughts are embedded deeper in your consciousness; these require continuous effort to erase, stop, or change.
One of the fastest ways you can change certain embedded beliefs that you have about yourself and your life is to completely change your circumstances.
For me, that looked like quitting my job, and taking my first step into the unknown by buying a backpacking bag and backpacking around South America for one year.
This can also look like changing career paths, trying new hobbies, or putting yourself into new environments.
Over time, the baby steps you take out of your comfort zone will allow you to dissolve the deeper negative thoughts stemming from environmental conditioning.
Thoughts that Arise Within Us
Learning how to stop negative thoughts that arise within you may be one of the most powerful things you can do.
Voluntary thoughts that arise in the moment generally do not create deep karmas or impressions on the mind.
Involuntary thoughts that stem from unhealed traumas, deep stresses, and self-limiting beliefs, on the other hand, require your love, attention, and patience.
By regulating your nervous system, releasing stress and learning how to let go, you’ll be able to stop negative thoughts and find peace and happiness.
Yoga and meditation are powerful practices that have been around for millennia and can help you on this journey. Yoga is not just asana practice. Rather, yoga and spirituality are deeply tied where spirituality is healing and getting back in touch with your authentic self.
When you start and commit to an authentic yoga practice with an experienced teacher that is grounded in the practice, you will quickly be able to dissolve deep-seated stresses, stop negative thoughts, and finally live in the present moment again.
Stop Negative Thoughts
Heal trauma hidden beneath the surface, erase self-limiting beliefs, and let go of the past to find peace and happiness inside Parm’s Spiritual Academy
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