Sometimes Bad News Is Hard To Put Down

Have you ever felt like you were being sucked into a negative conversation (whether with yourself or others) and simply couldn’t extricate yourself?  Does it sometimes seem easier to continue a negative conversation than to change the subject to something more positive.  Is the same thing often true of your thinking?

You’re caught in the negative vortex.  It’s like a magnet sucking you in.

For those of us on the path to success, it’s critical to be able to pull ourselves out of these tornadoes of negative thinking.  The good thing is that it gets easier and easier with practice.

I’ve found as a business owner myself and as a coach for small business owners there are things that can trigger slipping into a negative vortex.

Do any of these sound familiar? Time to pay the bills and not enough money in the accounts, one client drops off and there aren’t enough in line to fill the space, your friends take off on a vacation, but you don’t have the time or the money.

Sometimes the suction of negative thinking can feel like this!!

Here’s an example of what can happen if you get into one of those tornadoes of thinking.  You recognize there isn’t enough money in the bank account.  Your chest tightens.  You get angry.  You think where is the money going to come from?  From there you start to slide downward into; why did I leave my corporate job, maybe I should start looking for a job, what’s wrong with me that I can’t get this business to work, other people seem to be doing fine, my friends are flying off to the Caribbean – but I can’t, where’s the money going to come from, I should have known better, I don’t see where the money’s going to come from and so on.

It’s like being sucked into a whirling thought pattern and you can’t seem to find your way out – every thought leads back to “the problem”.  One negative thought attracts the next.  AND it’s totally unproductive.

So what do you do?  Somehow you have to have an intervention.  Recognize you’re getting nowhere with this thinking.  Get to neutral.  One trick I use is to imagine putting these thoughts temporarily on the shelf.  I know if I need them later they’ll be there.  Then I focus on something else.  I use all my concentration to focus on breathing or start listing things I’m grateful for.  Invariably the negative thinking try’s to creep in again, but as soon as I notice those thoughts I set them aside and go back to my focus on breathing or gratitude – get to neutral.

It’s also helpful to change the view.  Get up and walk around.  Put on some music.  Call someone about a different subject.  Anything to break the pattern.

Magnetize The Positive

Then when you’re at neutral you can act and think in a more creative, life-giving way.  You can begin to concentrate on something else.  You can work on the work that is in front of you and that will bring in the clients or enhance your business.   And in thinking positively you’ll be attracting more positive people and opportunities to you.

So the first step is to create an intervention.  Change the scenery.  Get to neutral.  Stay there for awhile then focus on something else.

Unfortunately for many negative thinking is a stronger pattern than positive thinking, so even when you do get to neutral and then step up to positive thinking you’ve got to be alert and notice if you start slipping back.  The attraction of positive thought doesn’t seem to be as strong as the negative until you build it up.

One great trick I learned from one of my coaching colleagues, Susan Lichty-Schmidt at www.centeredforsuccess.com is to think of five things you are grateful for.  I often use this if my thinking is tipping into the negative.  I suspect you may find and even be amazed how even with this simple positive thinking task you can get distracted before you complete the list of 5.  Try it.  Try it anytime you have any free thinking time – when you get in the car, when you get up in the morning, before you go to bed at night, when you go out for a walk.  It’s fun.

Check out my Day Starter System, a system designed to get your actions and feelings aligned with your goals so you start to see dramatic results.

All the Best

Judy

P.S.  If you checked out The Day Starter System, but weren’t quite ready – try the free Five Day Challenge.

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