These rules to deal with toxic thoughts and make you feel better about life are quite simple. However, it is very effective that I saw many of my friends do it and get good results.
Therefore, in the article today, I will share with you all of them. I hope that these valuable rules will help you to deal with toxic thoughts as I used to.
Toxic thoughts like black coffee.
It’s bitter, not good when using too much, but many of us are addicted to it without knowing that we are addicted.
60,000 thoughts — This is the average number of thoughts you have in your mind every single day.
And the scientist from the National Science Foundation in 2005 found out that 95% was exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before. Within 80% of your thoughts are negative while just have 20% are positive thoughts.
Do these numbers shock you?
For me, I never think that I can have that many thoughts, and most of them are negative like this until when I read this analysis around 2 years ago.
And let have a quick calculation, if you have around 60,000 thoughts a day and 85% are negative, it means that in a day, you have about 51,000 negative thoughts in your mind.
This is a massive number, and when you think about what happens in your life, I think that you already understand why there are so many struggles and issues that happen in your life before and right now, right?
Because when your mind always full of negative thoughts, the negative things happen as the obvious results.
And the best way to help you to reduce the number of negative things that can happen in your life is to find ways to reduce the number of negative thoughts that appear daily in your head.
Rule 1 to deal with toxic thoughts: 5s RULE
Let learn to control your mind with the 5s rule.
This is a great lesson I learned from Mel Robbins in her Tedtalk speech around 2 years ago about how to control my mind.
It means that you will allow your mind to keep any thoughts in 5s before you decide to make it or quit it.
The idea of this technique is we give our minds the freedom to come up with any thought, but we will control the way how the thoughts can impact our lives by giving them just 5s before choosing to conduct or not.
And I used it by giving all my positive thoughts 5s to appear in my mind before I start working on it (or I will write down it immediately if I’m in the middle of doing other things). So, later on, I can work on that thought.
While for the negative thoughts, I also give us 5s to appear before telling myself to quit it out of mind. And the tip that I normally do to switch my thoughts from negative to zero is by using my hand to hit my head 3 times slightly.
It likes a signal for my head that
“Hi mate! This is all 5s. Now stop thinking about that stupid thing”.
You don’t need to hit your head as I did (even just a slight one, if you don’t like it), just do anything you feel comfortable about and make it as a signal for your brain that it’s already finished 5s to think.
Then, now is the time for your brain to stop this negative thought.
Rule 2 to deal with toxic thoughts: Looking at the problems in life as potential opportunities.
The problem in your life is the foundation for the toxic thoughts to grow.
And if your life is always full of opportunities and great things happen to you, the negative thoughts will never have the opportunity to come up in your life.
But unfortunately, life is full of up and down.
You will have a lot of opportunities but also have a variety of problems. And we all can’t stop the problem that comes to us, as these come from outside factors.
However, both you and I can change the way how we see the problem by adopting the mindset that:
“Problems are the potential opportunities”.
And this is a big lesson I learned from my economics teacher when I studied at the University. When he taught us about the issues in economics, even this is negative or positive, he normally reminds us that
Any economics issue you are studying here can see in a negative or positive way. And nothing that just has one angle to approach, we always have multiple ways to approach it.
The real issue is “Which way you choose to approach”?
If you want to have a good result, you need to think in a positive way and make your actions based on your thoughts.
And if you think the issue from its dark side, and you work on it as negative one. Your expected result hardly to be positive.
The way you choose to approach will decide your outcome. Not the problem itself.
After years graduated, I am still thankful for his great lesson. It helps me to change a lot in the mindset when thinking about the problems in life.
For me now, any problem that appears in my life is always a potential opportunity for me to learn and grow.
And instead of spending time focusing on the negative side of this problem, I choose to keep calm and spend private time to think about the positive impacts that this problem can bring to me when I can solve it.
It helps a lot in stopping me from having toxic thoughts while figuring out the positive ways to approach the problem and solve it properly.
If you still feel struggle with how to make decisions in your life when you face problems, let check more on this detailed blog “What To Do When You Don’t Know “How to make decisions in your life”.
Final thought
The toxic thoughts like black coffee. We drink too much is not healthy but if we can have a little bit (under the control of ourselves), it helps our life to be more interesting (have up and down).
But the problem with many of us is we don’t know how to control the input of toxic thoughts and keep it growing daily in our head lot.
And I hope that these 2 rules that I did and presented for you in this story will be helpful for you as the way it helps me to control my toxic thoughts in recent years.
A cup of coffee means enjoy the bitter, but many cups of coffee mean to destroy your health.
And toxic thoughts under the control means healthy and interesting life while a lot of toxic thoughts mean you are burning your mind.
P/s:
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