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How to control your negative thinking

Today we’re talking about how to kick negative thoughts in the face. It is possible to train your mind to overcome and turn your negative thoughts around.

A lot of people have this like external locus thing where everything around them; their environment, their circumstances — they feel like their feelings come from the external but it doesn’t. All of your thoughts show up in your brain (which is internal). And even though they’re kind of patterns that you don’t consciously control, you can definitely control how you look at things and how you assign meaning to them. Change your perception a little bit and then you change your reality.

Strategies for controlling negative thoughts

Let’s look at some strategies to turn your negative thoughts into positive thoughts, or at least stop the negative thoughts from fucking you up.

We’ll cover x Strategies here;

  • Change your focus- Understand that nobody gives a fuck- Stop taking yourself so seriously- Remove negativity from your life- Get someone else’s perspective- Stop thinking about it- Exercise - Recognize when fear takes over

Beat negative thinking by changing your focus

The first strategy for taking negative thoughts in the face is changing your focus. If you run into some sort of negative situation, try to immediately turn it into something positive. Focus on what you can learn about the situation, or what you’re grateful for.

You can put your issue into perspective in the larger world, even if even if what you learn is that you don’t want to do that thing again, it’s still a positive thing because knowing how you don’t want to do things can help you set up boundaries.

You can set up your life in a way that you don’t ever have to deal with that bullshit again. Some people have issues like, being super broke, they feel the pain of the broke-ness. Instead of focusing on the pain and the craziness, they focus on how they’re going to fix it in the future. Thinking this way can lead you to creating a budget, or paying your credit cards off early or whatever decisions come from there.

If you change your focus to what you can do about it, what you can be grateful for the situation, or how the situation stacks up to the rest of the world ( not in your small myopic view), it changes the way those situations will make you feel. If, as you focus on positive thoughts, the mind will start to generate the positive emotions. Then you don’t have to feel the crazy bullshit that happens and you can avoid the downward spiral of focusing on the negative stuff.

Control your negative mindset by understanding nobody gives a fuck

The second strategy of kicking negative thoughts in the face is understanding that most people don’t give a fuck.

Most people just don’t give a fuck. If you say the wrong shit, if you dress the wrong way, if you don’t show up properly put together or all perfect. If you do something embarrassing, most people don’t actually give a fuck.

They don’t make a big deal out of it. Even if they do, it doesn’t last very long in the grand scheme of the world. One of my mentors, Julian Blanc got roped into this crazy ass media scandal a few years back.

Julian Blanc’s misogyny media scandal is irrelevant.

Somebody took his youtube videos in and out of context and made him look really bad. For a few weeks, the whole internet seemed to rail against him. They called him the most hated man in America for a bit and he had to go apologize on CNN and shit.

I realized after all that happened that nobody really gives a fuck. They gave a fuck right then… in the moment: it was news. But if I ask anybody who he is nowadays, after three or four years later, nobody cares.

He’s already created a new business and created, a whole bunch of wealth and happiness himself, and nobody gives a fuck about his previous fall from grace. Most things just don’t matter. Nobody gives a fuck.

Are you taking yourself too seriously?

The third strategy for kicking negative thoughts in the face is to ask yourself whether or not you’re being too serious. Sometimes it’s easy to take something seriously when it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t really matter.

Think about this; If you slipped and fell while you’re trying to sit in your seat at work does anyone care? It’s embarrassing, maybe… but does it matter? Is it going to stop your job?

If you put on the wrong shoes today does it really matter? Not really. None of that shit matters if you put it in proper perspective, It really matter that much if you pronounce your words wrong. If you screwed up when you’re speaking and you had to go correct yourself. None of that shit matters.

If you get hyper focused on one mistake, or a bad moment, then you can perpetuate that mistake or the moment, repeat your mistakes over and over again, and then you’re fucked.

If you don’t perpetuate it, and you just stop it right there, the effects of the small mistake will fade quickly.

Another way to deal with whether or not you’re being too serious is to realize that most things just don’t matter in general in the long run (see the previous point). No matter what you do today you’re probably not going to make a whole large amount of difference in the grand scheme of the world.

It just doesn’t really matter that much.

If you put yourself on a projected trajectory to consistently produce certain kinds of results those things can build up and that’s cool. And if you produce negative results obviously those can build up and that’s not cool.

Single events, single days, single moments, they’re not that big of a deal. So ask yourself whether you’re not you’re being too serious about that shit.

Remove negativity from your life

Next way to kick negative thoughts in the face is to replace general negativity in your life. If you got some negative people in your life, if you hang out in negative places, or if you’re doing some negative shit, take an inventory of your life and get fucking rid of the negativity when you can.

You can learn to adapt when outer negativity comes, but if you’re already doing dumb shit, hanging out with dumb people, and you want to be more positive…

Stop hanging out with dumb people, and stop doing stupid shit. Duke DeLaet

If you reduce the influx of self-created negativity then you’re going to think about the negative shit a lot less. If you hang around new people who are much more positive or more supportive, then they will help you focus on more positive shit just by nature of being around them.

Don’t make decisions bigger than they are.

The next method of taking negative thoughts in the face is to avoid making decisions bigger than they are. Most people are so plagued with self doubt that they have trouble making decisions. They can’t figure out which one’s better. They can’t figure out where to go, which direction to take, what to eat.

When you’re making any decision, just figure; Is this gonna matter in six months, a year, five years from now? Is what you did right now really going to matter at all? If the answer is yes, then you can determine the importance of it… it could be a really serious situation. If not thought, whatever I talked about today, or whether I eat Social monk or Panda Express… It has no fucking bearing on my life.

Now, if I create a pattern, and overeat Taco Bell every day, then I’m going to create some health problems. The individual decision doesn’t really make that much difference when it’s not a pattern or a habit.

Why would I, spend my emotional energy, my willpower and time on dealing with that decision or anything similar when I could just go eat whatever is convenient, or what’s on the schedule. Then I could keep moving forward and I don’t have to waste my mental willpower or my positive vibes on it.

Get someone else’s perspective on your negative thoughts

The next way to deal with your negative thinking is to talk to someone. If you have a bunch of negative thoughts and need to talk it out, find somebody you trust. Make sure the person you’re talking to you positive and not going to make you feel bad about yourself.

A lot of times we’ll talk about with people that think like we do. If we’re stuck in a hole of depression, the other people in the hole of depression will just reinforce the thoughts and the feelings and that’s not kicking negative thoughts in the face. That’s inviting them in and giving them tea.

Sometimes, what helps is toask somebody if you’re overreacting, or if you’re making things bigger than they are – especially if you can find somebody who understands *how *you’re trying to change your life and get over self doubt, then they can probably help you from a more third party perspective.

That will give you much more value in the conversation than somebody who’s just backing up your negativity. This person might be professional (like a therapist, your life coach, your friend, your daily positive podcast creator…) or anybody you know that can empathize with you and yet see things from a larger perspective. That’s going to help.

Stop your mind from thinking about negative thoughts

The next method of kicking negative thoughts in the face is to stop thinking about them. Sometimes, if negative thoughts are going to ruin the whole experience you’re living in… it’s better to put your negative thoughts on a shelf.

During what’s going on, try to really live in the moment, because if you keep your negative outlook as you’re going through actual bullshit, then the negative outlook is going to color the way you deal with the bullshit. Your solutions aren’t going to be as good. Your mood is just going to plummet to the floor, your willpower is going to drop, so fuck it. Say “I don’t want to think about this shit, but I’m gonna do it anyway”. Then, just live through it.

Stop yourself from future projecting all the anxiety into the future, or from going backwards to ruminate on all the things you fucked up in the past. Be present with what’s going on right, now get through it.

Put the negative bullshit on the shelf for safekeeping, and then you can take it down later and tear it apart when you have less distracted mind.

As my buddy Sassy always says;

Two tears in a bucket… Motherfuckit.Sassy Handy

Roughly translated it means… limit the time you whine about shit, then move on.

Work out – Exercise to control your negative thoughts.

The next way to deal with negative thoughts, is to exercise. When it comes down to it, most of us have a lot of extra energy. We get nervous vibes and we had all this agitation in our bodies. You can burn it off if you work it out at the gym. It doesn’t have to be a long time, you can do something quick – high intensity interval stuff – or you can go for a walk and just let your blood start moving. Put your body in a resourceful state, you’re going to have a lot better feelings coming into the situation.

If your negative thoughts come, but they can get thwarted if you have some good dopamine running through your system as you as you get your workout in. You get you get into your body and you’re a little distracted from going through all the weird mental machinations that you were doing.

If you get your blood pumping for a little bit, your mind can reset from thinking negatively.

Recognize fear’s influence on your negative thoughts

The last way to deal with kicking negative thoughts in the face is to realize when it’s really fear. Sometimes negativity will poke its head in your life, and when you’re doing something a little bit uncomfortable or pushing yourself out of the out of your comfort zone.

The voice in your head may tell you; “Oh, well… you weren’t supposed to do this anyway blah blah blah. See, you’re not good at this!” All the voices will come back to your head, but really it’s just fear. You’re uncertain of the future or you don’t know what’s going to go on.

It manifests itself as you know negative self talk and then manifest yourself as taking your self-belief out because you’re doing that negativity… but you’re really doing fear, and that’s going to create a badness all around.

Start kicking negativity out of your life by controlling your own thoughts

It will help a lot with overcoming negative thoughts if you put these suggestions into action. You may come up with some of your own too. Add them to the comments if you’re feeling share-ey. The point is, you want to turn negative thoughts around so that you can instead experience positivity in your day. That way, you don’t get stuck in a pattern of self-doubt.