Can You Control the Negativity in Your Life?

For some of us, staying positive is difficult. No matter how much we want to be positive, we worry, we get mad, and we just let things get the better of us.

Being negative has consequences. Maintaining a negative outlook takes energy. Maintaining a negative outlook is a distraction. Maybe most distressing of all, maintaining a negative outlook can have detrimental effects on your health (both physical and mental).

The good news is that negative influences in our life only have power if we give them power. There are things you can do to decrease the negative in your life and increase the positive.

Affirmations. There is a lot of evidence that affirmations can affect your conscious and subconscious thoughts. It is almost impossible for your mind and body to ignore affirmations that are actually spoken. Speaking affirmations on a daily basis will train your mind (and your spirit) to be positive.

Avoid negative people. We all know people who are always negative, no matter what is going on. These people can be a drain on you and your emotional health. When possible, try to always be positive around negative people. If they persist in their negativity, avoid them.

Forget past mistakes. This may be the hardest one of all. We are often paralyzed by the mistakes we have made in the past. We base our future decisions on past mistakes. For some, the past prevents them from moving forward. The negative influence of the past is hard to break.

Don’t continually relive those past mistakes and events. If you have free time to think, try to make sure your thoughts stay in the present and on positive aspects of the future.

Negative thoughts can lead to making rash decisions based on the passion of the moment. These decisions can cause irreparable damage to you and to those around you. By controlling the negativity around you and in your thoughts, you will minimize the chances that you actions will be influenced by negative thoughts or events.

Choose to be positive. Any situation can have positive aspects. It may not seem like it at the time, but we can all think of really terrible times in our lives where we came out the better for the experience. We will also have bad things happen to us—that is just the nature of life, but it is up to us to decide how those experiences affect the rest of our life.

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results. Willie Nelson

It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts. Robert H. Schuller

Once our minds are ‘tattooed’ with negative thinking, our chances for long-term success diminish. John Maxwell