Break Into Negativity With Thought Stoppage

“The mind is its own place, and in itselfnCan make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.nnJohn Milton Paradise LostnnnMuch of the time you are what you think. Your thoughts whether positive or negative define how your day will go. Catching and breaking into negative thoughts is a series of ideas called Thought Stoppage. The famous psychologist William James said “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” nnYou can learn to interrupt your fear thoughts and get back to your more positive mind and change your mood. Yelling "Stop!" or "Negative thought get out of here!" is a way to put youself in charge of your mind. Tell yourself "I'm not going there" gives you more control of your mind. Adding a gesture such as shrugging your shoulders or pretending to push the thought away gives added emphasis. I won’t give negative thoughts free rent in my brain! Or I won’t expand any more brain botts on this!nnGestures are great for helping break into the downward turn of the mind. Snapping yourself with a rubber band on your wrist and telling yourself to snap out of it when you have a thought you don’t care for applies a weak punisher to the thought. Other gestures accompanied with thought stoppage words include pretending to brush the thought off your shoulder or shrugging the thought off while reminding yourself to let it go, making a screeching sound and pretending to put on the brakes on the thought. I tell myself quite firmly, “Lynne, don’t go there. Just don’t go there,” while I push out my hand in the stop position. Any dismissive gesture will do to add movement and emphasis to interrupting the distressing thought.nnThought stoppage bids you to be aware of what your mind says about daily events and make a conscious decision to break into negative judgments about the situation. Break into the obsessive negativity of your mind by giving yourself a command to cut it out! For example if you are dwelling on unfair a situation is, tell yourself, “I need to stop thinking about unfairness now. I’ve thought about this enough. I choose to change the direction that my mind is going. I won’t buy into this situation. Don’t go there! Stop it! Thinking about this will only make things worse. I choose to think about something else to get myself away from these negative emotions.” Or use the FIDO approach: Forget It. Drive On! nnMaybe you do some Thought Stoppage already. Think what you have figured out to chase bad thoughts and attitudes away. Your mind is like a short-wave radio pulling in thoughts from everywhere. We have thousands of thoughts that filter through our minds daily. After all would you stay with a channel on the TV or radio that pulls you down? Change the mental channel of your mind with these nifty Thought Stoppage techniques. nnMany of the thoughts are negative and upsetting draining the vital precious energy that you are given. Stopping the monkey chattering of the mind is an ongoing process that will continue the rest of your life. The next time there is a triggering event; take it as an opportunity for challenge. Watch how your mind grabs hold of negative thoughts and throw them out before they pull your mood down. Especially watch how your negativity is connected to low self-esteem. nnOne study tied the emergence of paranoid thoughts (Somebody is out to get me) to decreases in self-esteem as a protective attempt to distract the mind away from feeling discouraged and onto someone external. Paranoid thoughts as well as jealous ones that are not based in reality happen more when the person feels insecure. How we feel about ourself fluctuates quite a bit and is influenced by the events that just happened. The swings in mood from “I feel great to I feel lousy because this ____ just happened to me” is normal, but it is much better to address intense swings in mood related to outside events. Giving too much credence to outside events that influence the mood takes away from our own sense of mastery. It is much better to work the thoughts and keep the mind more stable and balanced. nnContinual negative thoughts are a nasty habit that can be challenged and broken and they typically have one or more errors in thinking at their core. Albert Ellis says that you can become the master of your mind if you are willing to address errors in thinking when they come up. He emphasizes that events do not make you angry—the meaning that you give to the events are the culprits that keep you upset. Once you accept this way of thinking, you can use self-talk as a calming, mood reduction strategy. Or at the least a way to interrupt your riled-up thinking. One man grinned as he talked about the Danger Road of his mind. He said “Whenever I’m going down that Danger Road, I rein myself in and tell myself not to go do something sure-fire stupid.”nnRemember, no matter what the worry, issue, question or quandary, the answer is love.n