Your Thoughts Are Not Your Boss

Have you ever been plagued by negative thoughts? Have you ever felt like your mind just wouldn’t quiet down and all you could feel is worried or anxious or depressed or really mad?

Well there is a process you can do to go about reducing negative thoughts. It's not hard and I recommend making it a habit. But like any habit you have to do it repeatedly. Over and over and over.

Whenever you have a bad thought, a worry thought, a mad thought, a scary or depressing thought, your brain releases a bunch of chemicals that make you feel lousy immediately. You have real physical sensations. Sometimes they’re intense. These chemicals coursing through your system make your muscles tense up. Your breathing gets more shallow and erratic. Your heart rate speeds up. You may start to sweat or feel queasy. And it all happens really fast.

So here’s what you do. And you need to make the time to really do it and stop listening to the other thoughts that are telling you you’re too busy. Just tell them something like, “Thanks for sharing.” Or, “I’m busy doing this exercise, I’ll get back to you later, thanks.”

Here’s the practice. Whenever you feel down, or mad, or nervous, or sad, or out of control, write down what you're thinking and then ask yourself, “Is it true?”

“Is it absolutely true?”

“How do I feel when I have this thought?”

“How do I act when I have this thought?”

And, “What's the outcome of the thought?”

Now this is the key. Take the original thought. Maybe it’s something like, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” and then write down the flipside. Write down the opposite of that thought. In this case it would be, “I know what I’m doing.” And then ask yourself whether or not that is true.

This is how we stop being a victim of our thoughts and teach our small-self mind who’s boss.

So go ahead and write down 50 to 100 of your worst thoughts. Go through this process. By the time you get to about 25 to 30 or so your thoughts will stop harassing you. And over time these thoughts will either be gone or they’ll get really quiet and weak and easy to dismiss.

Let me know what you discover!