Control Negative Thoughts By Using One Simple Exercise

You have the choice to control negativity and self-sabotaging behavior by creating positive beliefs and envisioning positive outcomes. Through a practice called “thought stopping,” you can change direction when you find yourself slipping into a negative thought pattern. Say to yourself, with a loud and firm inner voice: STOP! Once you’ve done this, it’s important to replace your previous thought with a more positive statement and image. Clearly acknowledge which statements cause you to feel pain or threat, and which statements allow you to feel success, joy and happiness.

When people unnecessarily stress themselves by thinking that they have no control over a controllable situation, they need to use their inner voice to shout out the word “STOP.” Then, change track and think about how the situation can be redirected.

Now, take this opportunity to practice “thought stopping.” What reoccurring thought causes you to feel negative, or some form of discomfort, pain, or threat? (Example: Taking risks makes me feel anxious.) Now write it down!

Next, with a loud and firm inner voice, shout out “STOP!” Again, “STOP!” Replace your negative feeling or thought with a positive statement. (Example: When I take risks I experience excitement, learn more about myself, and feel encouraged to risk again.)

When you attach specific positive words to positive feelings and experiences, you can recall positive feelings at will by using those words. Now apply the positive affirmation for yourself. Using your positive statement, attach it to feelings of success, joy, and happiness. For example, “When I challenge and encourage myself, I consistently move toward my goals with a success attitude, ‘I Can I Will.’ ”

Recite the statement to yourself several times. Each time, experience the positive feelings the statement generates. When you anchor positive words or statements to positive feelings, you can recall the positive feeling anytime you desire and create more positive outcomes, consistently.

Challenge yourself. Stop your self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors. Practicing thought stopping on a continual basis allows you to eliminate negative thoughts to become more aware of your feelings of accomplishment, self-acceptance, and of positive choice and change. Your new, bright thoughts and feelings of pleasure, joy and happiness drive you toward your destination of success. Positive feelings and beliefs increase your self-worth and self-esteem, empowering you to take action.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Did my fears start as a baby?

The people who develop severe fearful reactions and panic attacks have been categorized as an agoraphobic. In searching for the answers to why this condition exists and why they are so overcome with fear to the point of vomiting and pain, we often spend our entire lives simply avoiding people and places that bring on panic attacks while ignoring searching for the core of the problem.

It is not uncommon for people who have agoraphobia (which results in severe panic attacks) to make their homes a personal refuge point. Their homes become the only safe haven where they will feel at peace or at least slightly less worried of having an anxiety attack than being out and about in the outside world.

Let’s start at the beginning. People who develop issues with fear (agoraphobia) are born with creative intelligence and an abundance of sensitivity to all kinds of stimuli. As a baby, we were the ones whom had trouble sleeping and would react strongly to loud noises, bright lights, hot and cold feelings, medications, etc. We had a hyper-awareness and a keen sensitivity that can also be interpreted as the biological predisposition to agoraphobia.

While other babies may feel comfortable with a certain loud noise or welcome sudden changes in light or temperature, you and I were extremely bothered and overcome with stimuli that it caused a nervous reaction. The same goes for certain medications. Not only were our external senses easy to set off with anxiety but also the way our bodies reacted to internal substances was not welcomed without a fight.

Often times when medication is given to babies that are showing early signs of hypersensitivity, our bodies give off stress signals that made us feel uneasy and the only way to deal with that feeling as a baby was to cry. As adults our bodies are now able to do a wide variety of stress outlet activities like the shakes, high temperature, vomiting, nervousness, tunnel vision, etc.

It is important for you to recognize and accept your inherent intelligence and sensitivity. However, it is equally helpful to realize that your environment during your early years had also played an important role in setting you up for later difficulties with acute anxiety.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Identifying 5 Anxious Thoughts

When you’re overloaded by anxious thoughts that diminish your confidence in yourself, you tend to see things as more negative than they really are. Before the event, you may make negative predictions about how other people will respond to you, how you will perform, and how events will turn out. After the event, you may make negative evaluations of how you handled it. Certain patterns of anxious thinking are associated with social anxiety. Being aware of these patterns can help you identify them.

1. Perfectionism: Most of us like to do things well, but some people are so focused on doing things perfectly that it causes a great deal of distress. If you are a perfectionist, you may spend much more time on an activity than is warranted, taking time away from more rewarding pursuits. Perfectionism can be particularly troublesome if someone is watching you. You may be so worried about making a mistake that you can’t perform well. The most reliable way to avoid mistakes is not to do anything; many perfectionists become expert procrastinators who accomplish very little. Creative people allow themselves to make mistakes and learn from their mistakes as they go along.

2. All-or-nothing thinking: Related to the problem of perfectionism is all-or-nothing thinking. When you think this way, if a social encounter does not go the way you wanted, you see yourself as a complete failure. A more constructive approach is to see where you have succeeded and consider where you can do even better in the future.

3. Catastrophic thinking: This involves taking a disappointing experience and thinking it into a catastrophe. If you do not get that job offer (close that sale, get that date), you will never have another chance. In reality, most people have to put in a good number of job applications before they receive an offer.

4. Overestimating the danger in a situation: Most of us know people who worried excessively about failing each exam despite their history of getting strong marks in all their courses. Likewise, a socially anxious person may expect social encounters to turn out badly, even though they often turn out well.

5. Underestimating your ability to cope with a difficult situation: You may feed your anxiety by telling yourself that you will not be able to handle the upcoming meeting, work task, or family problem. In reality you are self-defeating yourself by materializing that outcome, with your negative thinking.

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Learn Why Having A Negative Self-Concept Is A Recipe For Failure

Your self-concept is wrapped up in a set of descriptions and images - of good success scenes or bad failure scenes that you’ve experienced. It is also carried in a set of personality trait labels you use to tell yourself and others what you are really like. Your self-evaluations are important because they influence most areas of your behavior, defining the limits of what you will attempt. You avoid an activity if your self-concept predicts you will perform so badly as to humiliate yourself. For instance, if your self-concept includes the belief that you would be a poor ice skater, you might never try it, and will indeed remain a poor ice skater. Often people excuse themselves with “That’s just the way I am.” By using this excuse, they deny themselves opportunities for personal growth.

If you could listen in, you would hear non-assertive people saying all kinds of negative sentences to themselves. They selectively remember some criticism of themselves, exaggerate it to monstrous proportions, and repeat it over and over like a chant. The man battling his bulging waistline might be saying, “I am ugly, fat, and disgusting. No one can stand to look at me. I am a fat worm. I’ve got no will power.” The shy, retiring boy at a dance might be saying, “Those girls are whispering about me. My pimples are horrible. If I talk to that girl, she’ll insult and ridicule me. I never know what to say to girls. I’ll die if she cuts me down.”

The fact is that people are often their own worst downers. They say to themselves, “I am irrational, emotional, stupid, dull, ugly, shy, cold, submissive, fat, ineffectual, overbearing, bitchy, childish, a bully, a miserable father (mother), a lousy speaker, a failure, and over-the-hill.” We all have our own lists. People can be terribly brutal with themselves. Out of the whole animal kingdom, only humans are endowed with this capacity to make themselves miserable. Can you imagine your pet cat or dog moping around, saying such brutal things to himself?

Worse yet, in many cases our negative view of ourselves may be communicated to new acquaintances before they have time to form an independent impression of us. If we tell people we are inadequate, they may do us the disservice of believing us. A woman in one of Sharon’s assertiveness classes repeatedly advertised herself poorly by prefacing each remark with, “I doubt if my idea is worth anything, but…” Without realizing it, the class did indeed pay less and less attention to her ideas - at least until they stopped to examine the subtle message her remark conveyed.

The toll of a negative self-concept is that it limits what we are willing to try, forestalling opportunities for growth and enjoyment. Doomsday prophesies about our social failures tend to be self-fulfilling. The shy woman who retreats from friendly overtures is indeed judged to be cold, aloof, disdainful, and the man who was turned down for approaching her is even less likely to make another overture to her (or vice versa!) The student with anxiety about taking a test “goes blank” to such an extent that he does indeed fail just as miserably as he had feared.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Goal setting workshops can inspire participants

There are several individuals and organizations that run goal setting workshops to help participants set and achieve goals. These workshops underscore the advantages of goal setting and explain the various goal setting methods.

The three most popular workshops are: career workshops, health workshops and financial workshops. All these workshops deal with tangible goals, and a participant attending these workshops can hope to become a better manager of personal finances or can end up getting a better career break.

Most of these workshops are run by trained counselors, HR consultants and psychologists. In recent years, software developers have also started showcasing their goal setting applications at these workshops.

Normally these workshops are organized over two days though single-day workshops too are possible. The resource persons take great pains in explaining what are goals, how to set goals and, most important, how to achieve them

The effort is to provide practical tips for setting and achieving goals. Great stress is laid on the writing of goals, use of goal setting charts and goal setting software. The participants are also told the importance of regular reviews, and how not to loose heart if they fail to achieve a task.

Another point that is stressed at these workshops is the need to break long-term goals into short-term goals or sub-goals, and to assign deadlines for each sub-goal. This is useful advice because it is easier to achieve a short-term goal. Further, the individual feels excited whenever a sub-goal is achieved. This, in turn, generates motivation to move on to the next sub-task.

The workshop fees is fixed on the basis of speakers invited to the workshop, the place where the workshop is being held and the food that is to be served to the participants. The more up market the workshop the higher is the fees.

However, there is little doubt that these workshops fire the imagination of participants. Most of them go back determined to set their goals.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Are You Ready For Change In Your Life ?

When you are willing to set goals, your motivation becomes more focused and less confused in everyday interactions. Setting goals and designing your dreams and aspirations is a commitment to participate in a dynamic relationship and interaction between yourself and others. Committing yourself to be in a relationship with others helps to create an environment of self-support. The “willingness” to define your goals and aspirations provide you with the motivation to focus on achieving your goals.

Your “will” to take action and achieve your goals is different than wishing your goals to complete themselves. Wishing is a desire for the possibility of some act or state arbitrarily occurring. When it comes to making your goals happen, wishing can be self-sabotaging. “Willing” is self-responsible behavior. When you take conscious control of your life, you actively plan your course or direction. Determining your direction builds positive momentum in your life. Creating positive momentum and enthusiasm drive you to share your enthusiasm with others. When you encourage others to believe in themselves you build positive momentum in their lives.

Your first responsibility as an encouraging person is to yourself. Make your best effort to provide the proper atmosphere for growth to occur. Discovering your own personal power and “free will” requires an attitude of positive self-control.

Without commitment, you are helplessly determined by others and their “will.” To overcome fear and determine your own destiny, you must make a commitment to believe in your own free will. By being committed, you actively assert yourself in your relationship with others and the world. When you become self-supportive, you become better equipped to overcome barriers that prevent you from reaching your goals. By committing yourself to your goals, you generate power in taking a risk to achieve your goals. Developing clarity of focus increases your self-determination and your ability to make up your own mind.

Breaking the shackles of past behaviors and attitudes that have kept you from growing and changing can be uncomfortable. Change is not always comfortable, and it’s definitely not stable or predictable. Deciding to make new, positive changes that generate excitement, or to remain in your stable, sedentary world (or relationship), is a decision only you can make. You have one question to ask yourself: What’s rewarding to you? If you’re comfortable with staying in one spot in life, that’s your choice. But if you want to move on and travel to new destinations, mentally and emotionally, then go for the change.

The challenge is to take conscious control of producing positive thoughts and behaviors that will create healthy choices for you and your life. Make up your mind and overcome your fears. Your positive attitude, like your “will,” is powerful medicine. Turn on your power key to success and become more dynamic. Get fired up and drive with conviction toward your dreams.

Popularity: 32% [?]