You can’t stop your negative thoughts! Of course you can.
Sure, evolution may have wired us to have negative thoughts. That doesn’t mean that we have to tolerate it.
Can you relate?
I’m so excited to write today’s newsletter. I’ve got my laptop open. I have a detailed outline in front of me and a steaming hot cup of herbal tea next to me. I‘m in the zone and I’m so ready to tackle this week’s topic; negative thoughts.
I start typing.
Thirty seconds later, I feel just a bit off-kilter. I’m not sure why, but I feel like I should probably stop typing.
I’m okay. I’m good at this. I can type through a bit of nondescript insecurity. You know what, maybe I should take a break, grab a doughnut?
I’m not getting a doughnut. I’m working. I’m a self-improvement guy. I shouldn’t even have doughnuts in the house.
I resume typing. Yep, it’s going well.
Wait a minute. What am I doing? That was a terrible sentence. I typed the word “and” and I should have typed “or”. Maybe I should get a doughnut. I could use a pick-me-up.
I’m not getting a doughnut.
I resume typing again.
Does anyone actually care about this topic? Is there even anything else to be said about negative thoughts? It’s old news. It’s stale. I should move on.
I need to boost my energy. This is exhausting. I deserve that freakin’ doughnut.
I’m not getting a damn doughnut!
I resume typing…sort of.
Typing is tedious. Maybe I should use a dictation app instead. Wait a minute. Real writers don’t use dictation apps. I’m not a real writer. But, I’ve been writing for years, so I’m good, right? No, I suck! I can barely string a few interesting words together……
Do you frequently have some version of this conversation with yourself? We all do. When this happens, you’re really talking to your subconscious mind.
Take a breath. Your subconscious mind isn’t your mother-in-law and it’s not out to get you or to criticize how you raise your children. It’s also not a school yard bully who needs to make itself feel better by humiliating you whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Your subconscious mind is just a program. It’s the app that runs in the background and, to a certain extent, controls almost everything you do. Research suggests that its been preprogrammed by millions of years of evolution to focus on the negative, and to keep you alive!
It called Negativity what?
In a 2021 paper Newcastle University researcher Dr. John Lazarus defined the Negativity Bias as “an evolutionarily adaptive for bad to be stronger than good.” Lazarus said, “We believe that throughout our evolutionary history, organisms that were better attuned to bad things would have been more likely to survive threats and, consequently, would have increased probability of passing along their genes.”
In other words, for better or worse, evolution may have designed us to focus more on negative events and negative thoughts. Twenty thousand years ago, your chances of getting eaten by a saber tooth tiger were pretty good. You also had an excellent chance of getting mauled by a cave bear. Lions, hyenas and even Komodo Dragons were all gunning for you and your kids. It wasn’t a good time to meditate, appreciate the magnificent beauty of the sunflower or to double down on positive thinking.
So, we evolved to be miserable? Not necessarily. The negativity bias can help you understand why you have more negative thoughts than good ones and why you remember more bad things than good things. But, it doesn’t have to limit you to a life of misery and mediocrity. Unlike the cave bear or the Komodo Dragon, you no longer live in an environment where you have to avoid danger at every turn and you’ve been fortunate to evolve a conscious brain that has the ability to reprogram it’s subconscious mind. Yea!
WELLNESS TIP: Reprogram your subconscious mind with your cell phone. Set an alarm on your phone that repeats hourly. When the alarm goes off think of something positive. Do this for one week. If it works, try it for another week.
WHAT’S THE SCIENCE? According to VeryWellMind “the human brain can change and adapt due to experience.” This is called Neuroplasticity. Your brain can change functionally. It can relocate some functions from damaged areas to undamaged areas. It can also change its physical structure through learning. Therefore, to some extent, you can physically and functionally change your brain by reprogramming it to think more positively.
How do the experts do it?
There’s no shortage of methods to help you reprogram your subconscious mind. We’re all custom designed beings and no single method works for everyone. Here’s a few interesting methods from the some of the sharpest minds in the self improvement space.
Shrikumar Rao: In his book Modern Wisdom, Ancient Roots Rao suggests that you take time each day to simply observe your thoughts. Sit in a quiet place. Close your eyes and imagine a movie or TV screen in front of you. See your thoughts, whatever they happen to be at that moment, on the screen. Rao believes that this effort will help you separate yourself from your negative thoughts. When you preview them on the screen in your imagination, you no longer identify with them. You see yourself separate from those negative thoughts and you can begin to release them.
Regan Hillyer: In her manifestation quest on the MindValley platform Hillyer provides her students an eight hour meditation to play, in the background, while they’re sleeping. She believes that the subconscious mind is susceptible to suggestion while the body is in the sleeping state and that negative programming can be effectively changed.
Bruce Lipton: In his book The Biology of Belief Lipton says that we spend an inordinate amount of time and money on the “drugging of America”. Instead of using tools like hypnosis, habituation, cognitive behavioral therapy and energy psychology to reprogram our subconscious minds, we dumb down the senses with prescription drugs. The drugs frequently don’t work and don’t get to the root of the problem.
Our Thoughts: Reprogramming your subconscious mind and focusing on positive thoughts requires conscious, consistent effort. That being said, it isn’t difficult to achieve and there are dozens and dozens of effective methods to choose from. Some will work for you, many will not. We’re always testing out new ones. You may never completely eradicate negative thinking, nor would you want to. Negative thoughts are still useful in our modern world and the chances of completely outwitting millions of years of evolution aren’t in your favor. Still, you don’t have to be a victim of your pre-programmed mind. Change it.
At Envisage Wellness, Ritu Chib-Eiven and Mitch Eiven approach psychotherapy and coaching a little differently. In both areas our objective is to give you the tools to empower you to discover your own healing or your own path toward achievement. This newsletter is designed to be an extension of that effort. We’ll keep it short, helpful and deliver it to your inbox at least twice a month.