How To Think About Negative Thoughts
There is a lot of talk these days about the value of positive thinking, and as someone who helps people become more influential in their lives and the lives of others, I agree that how we think about something or someone can have a tremendous impact on how we experience life. The challenge with promoting the value of positive thoughts, however, is that people can start to see negative thoughts as the problem.
Suggestions such as “Don’t worry, be happy,” or “Don’t sweat the small stuff, … and it’s all small stuff,” speak to what people should avoid (worrying). Unfortunately, this can be taken to an extreme, with people becoming stressed and anxious about their negative thoughts, or worried about their worry and anxious about their anxiety. In these cases, people can become obsessed with trying to stop their negative thoughts…which only makes them worse.
Therefore, I suggest we look at both positive and negative thoughts in a way that allows us to choose between them using awareness versus worry, and in a way we would recommend to those we love. For example, if someone is coming at you with a knife, or you see someone driving the wrong way on a freeway, a “positive thought” is not helpful. In these cases, (and pretty much in any situation that calls for a fight-or-fight response) negative thoughts play an important role of allowing us to act quickly to survive.
In fact, for those of you who follow my “Life from the Top of the Mind” philosophy, you know that this is how the brain is wired. The middle brain, or limbic system, receives data first, and if the input is determined to be dangerous or threatening, it sends the data immediately down to the lower brain (the brainstem) where our fight-or-flight responses are engaged. This is what allows us to respond to dangerous situations “without thinking,” because the “thinking” part of the brain (the neocortex, or the part of the brain that makes purposeful choices based upon awareness) is bypassed in this process.
Again, this is exactly how the brain is designed to work. However, when we attempt to use negative thoughts (worry, fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, etc.) to make decisions in situations that are not fight-or-flight in nature, we are less successful because we have bypassed the most purposeful, creative, and wise part of the brain (the neocortex).
Therefore, I suggest we become clear about how we want to think about negative thoughts. When they serve to keep us safe in a fight-or-flight situation, we can allow them to influence our behavior and emotions. However, when the situation is not about fight-or-flight, but calls for a more purposeful response, then we want to be able to shift from the reactive brain to the purposeful brain (from the brainstem to the neocortex), access our best thinking, and make a decision in a way we would recommend to those we love.
When we can make this distinction, we can have positive thoughts about our negative thoughts by simply recognizing that this is a part of the brain trying to keep us safe in what it has determined to be a dangerous situation. If we know that it is not a truly dangerous situation, we can then shift to the part of the brain that is more about thriving than simply surviving.
The good news is that this is what I do. I teach individuals and organizations how to access this clear, confident, creative part of the brain, and make decisions that help them thrive. If this is something you would like me to teach to you or your organization, I suggest you contact me, because creating the life (marriage, organization) we want will always be accomplished quicker and more successfully by focusing on what we want versus what we don’t want. Or, put simply, if a positive experience of life is what we want, let’s not try to create it by trusting negative thoughts.
~ All the best, Dr. Bill