Life Skills & Value Education – CLASS-VII – UNIT-5 Overcoming Negative Thinking

You Become What You Think

The biggest obstacle you will ever have to overcome is your mind. If you can overcome that, you can overcome anything”.

-Anonymous

The mind of human beings is always active, even when we are asleep. Many different thoughts run through our minds as we go daily tasks right from the moment we wake up in the morning. If you think about it, your thoughts range from planning the rest of the day, looking forward to certain aspects and dreading certain others. Besides this, you form opinions and judgments, which in turn, shape your behaviours. One more important realisation would be that most of our thoughts tend to be negative. Sometimes we ignore them, sometimes we are deeply affected by them and sometimes we try to convert them into positive thoughts, depending on our personality and mood at the time.

OVERCOMING NEGATIVE THINKING Negative thought patterns are repetitive, unhelpful thoughts about ourselves, situations and the people we encounter they directly cause what we could describe as ‘negative’ (unwanted or unpleasant) emotions like stress, fear, shame, etc. Having negative thoughts is not a problem and in the people fact, it is normal. However, these negative feelings, if not controlled, eventually turn into anxiety and may lead to serious consequences for our lives.

SOME COMMON NEGATIVE THOUGHT PATTERNS	ALTERNATE POSITIVE THOUGHTS
Related to self-esteem: ‘I am not good/smart/intelligent enough’, ‘I will not be able to achieve this’ and so on.	‘I can do whatever I set my mind to’, ‘things may seem hard but it doesn’t mean my capabilities can’t match up’.
Related to others: ‘Nobody understands/ likes/loves me’, ‘People can see my flaws, so I should not be too close to anyone’ and so on.	‘Everybody has a different perspective, and that’s alright’, ‘I am what I am, and I need not pretend otherwise to please someone else’.
Related to situations: ‘I am so unlucky; someone always does better than me’, ‘If I don’t agree with my friends, they will stop talking to me’ and so on.	‘I will work hard and always put in my best efforts even through luck may not favour me sometimes’.
Related to body image: ‘I am not slim enough’, ‘My hair is too curly/straight/short’ and so on.	‘If I don’t feel comfortable with something, I need not do it’.
Related to self-esteem: ‘I am not good/smart/intelligent enough’, ‘I will not be able to achieve this’ and so on.	‘My body is precious, and I appreciate it’, ‘I strive to be the best I can be since there is no such thing as perfect’.
Related to others: ‘Nobody understands/ likes/loves me’, ‘People can see my flaws, so I should not be too close to anyone’ and so on.
Related to situations: ‘I am so unlucky; someone always does better than me’, ‘If I don’t agree with my friends, they will stop talking to me’ and so on.
Related to body image: ‘I am not slim enough’, ‘My hair is too curly/straight/short’ and so on.

Students practicing positive thinking exercises in Class VII Life Skills class

The human brain relies on habit to function. If we form a habit to think negatively, we start looking at most things in a negative way. So, it’s important to teach the brain the habit of thinking positive thoughts.

To overcome negative thinking, the common techniques we use are: Try to distract ourselves, divert our mind, push our negative thoughts away, not to drown in sorrow and cry or even make negative stories around it. But none of these ways are effective in the long term. The only long-term solution is to change the thought patterns by understanding ourselves better and understanding where the negative thoughts originate from.

Some of the more effective ways of overcoming negative thinking our as follows:

1.Dwell deeper: Try to find out what is causing you to think negatively.

2.Face your underlying fears and insecurities: Our fears and insecurities tend to distort the way we look at and think about things.

3. Recognise your negative thought patterns: Try and learn to distinguish between thoughts and facts. The real problem is believing all the negative thoughts to be the truth.

4. Avoid apprehensions: Instead of focusing on our present, we tend to worry about all the terrible things that could happen to us in the future, even when there is no way of knowing whether the things will actually happen or not.

5. Look for solutions: Repeatedly thinking about problems and worrying doesn’t help. It is better to learn from our past mistakes and alter our current behaviour for good by adopting a solution focused approach.

6. Stop paying too much attention to negative thoughts: The more you focus on a negative thought and discuss it with others, the longer it will stay with you.

7.Spend more time with positive people: The company we keep is a big influence on our thinking. 8.Reality check: Overthinking and worrying makes us interpret reality inaccurately. It is better to keep asking yourself if what you are thinking is indeed correct or is it just your mind making up things because of negativity.

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