Has Dwelling On Negative Thoughts Ever Actually Solved Them?
We’ve all got stories in our heads. You and I got one playing right now.
Last week, a friend of mine tried to commit suicide. He was literally off the balcony ready to jump and his sister held his arm for dear life. She held on long enough for the ambulance to arrive and they were able to sedate him and bring him to the hospital.
I know for a fact that the stories in his head led him to that life-and-death moment. I won’t get into the details out of respect. I know with 100% certainty that his internal dialogue almost killed him.
The problem is, most people have never CONSCIOUSLY WRITTEN their story. It’s a story they let the world write. It’s a tale that their egos put together. The internal movie has been shaped by the environment.
Unless you take control of the pen in your head, that story will disempower you and possibly destroy you.
Now, my friend’s attempted suicide is an example of what can happen when we become the star of a “bad movie” in our minds. If you don’t master your “self-talk”, you’re going to put yourself through unnecessary suffering.
Taking Control of Your Story Without Dwelling On Negative Thoughts
Stop Telling Yourself A Negative Story
Personally, things haven’t been going “smooth” for me the last couple of weeks. Here’s the facts:
– One of my businesses lost a merchant account a couple of months ago due to changes in that country’s regulations (completely out of our control). The new merchant account is holding funds which is forcing us to make tough financial decisions. Plus, there’s also some big management changes that we’re dealing with.
– I made some mistakes and errors that cost me a chunk of cake.
– My main work computer (3 year old Macbook Pro) died and I didn’t have any recent backup. Then two days later, I left my backup MacBook in the rain and it fried the keyboard and trackpad.
– My friend is in the hospital after attempting suicide.
And there’s some other emotional stuff going on that I won’t get into.
This was all in the same week. Combined, it took its toll emotionally. I was SAD.
Even when I was emotionally distraught, feeling the pain and sorrow of it all… I REFUSED to tell myself disempowering stories.
If I started telling myself crap like:
“When it rains, it pours.”
“It’s a karmic shitstorm.”
“Why are we getting fucked?”
… it would only ADD to the pain. Our egos love to add salt and vinegar to our wounds. A lot of people become HOOKED to these emotions. Here’s a great explanation of this phenomenon from the documentary “What The Bleep Do We Know?“
Yes, we will all go through pain. However, misery and suffering are optional. Eckart Tolle nailed it, “Suffering is necessary until you realize it is unnecessary.”
When I resist the pain, that’s when suffering begins.
Does this mean I’m in denial? Not at all.
I do the complete opposite. I don’t try to brush away the pain. I FEEL IT — without the story.
I use highly effective emotional management tools to FEEL the emotions head on… which reduces the pain (that I will elaborate on in future blog posts).
And I use mental discipline to control the narrative in my head.
I have Faith that it will all work itself out. However “Faith Without Work Is Dead” (James 2:14-26 — New King James Version).
Instead of whipping up a “sad story”, I just focused on the next action steps.
I bought a new MacBook Pro. I researched how to get the data off my old hard drive.
“Making errors” when learning something new, is 100% normal. There’s no escaping the learning curve. Why am I going to beat myself up? Of course, I’m going to make errors.
As I alluded to in this post, “there’s no mistakes, there’s only stopping”. It doesn’t matter what you want to do: become an entrepreneur, an investor, a trader, a marketer — you’re going to have to go through the learning curve. Embrace it. Don’t beat yourself up when those painful lessons come. Just keep swinging and adjusting.
The worm has turned on the business challenges. We got a chunk of money back from the merchant account. We have a new merchant account ready to go. My friend who attempted suicide is in psychiatric care and I have Faith he will get better with time.
It takes mental training and emotional awareness to be able to feel sad and not start throwing internal pity parties. If you feel down, do what Dr. David Hawkins suggest. Go your nearest mirror, look at yourself and say “Yours is the saddest story I’ve ever heard!”. The absurdity of the thought should crack you up.
And I want to be crystal clear: repressing your emotions is NOT the answer. That usually leads to some serious problems down the line.
The key is: don’t let the emotions take over your mind. Don’t let your negative emotions start writing the script.
Deal with your emotions HEAD ON (How? I’ll detail this in a future post).
Keep the narrative focused on the solutions.
Once you’re clear what the problems are, and you’ve gotten it off your chest by discussing it with someone you trust, there’s little value in continuing to talk about it. The only thing going on is your ego getting juiced from the negativity. Very few people are aware of it. And even less, are willing to let it go.
If you want your Level Of Consciousness to level up, become aware of the ego juice and surrender feeling it.
Start paying attention to the conversations you’re having. How much time are you spending talking about problems (not just yours, but “The World’s problems”)?
And pay even closer attention to the secret payoff you’re feeling when you’re doing so. Surrendering that, is where the Spiritual Breakthrough is.
