How To Turn Negative Thoughts Positive

It isn't easy but you can do it if I can. Negative thoughts are a pattern that we are taught since day one, for me personally it was mostly because I grew up in a cultural environment where I was taught that I needed to look a certain way, have a certain level of education and have certain goals that I had to achieve by a certain age to be considered certainly successful and honestly I'm pretty certain that I threw all of that out the window. 

The constant pressure of keeping up with the social demands only taught me to be negative and blame my circumstances when I didn't make it. It led to me severe mental health issues. But then one day, a very long time later, I realized negative thoughts are just fears! fears that I was taught I should have and once you realize that  your negative thoughts are just a thought pattern, you can overcome it more easily so here's how you do that.

1. Observe, Logic or Fear? Negative thoughts can be our way to rationalize situations sometimes but not always, when you get used to thinking negatively it is hard to differ between fear-based and logic-based negative thoughts and that is exactly what you should ask yourself, is this negative thought based on some fear I have deep in my head or it's actually logical? I had to really struggle to teach myself this but when I have a negative thought I say stop and observe that thought if it's even a rational thing to think if it doesn't make me happy why should it even be in my head-space? I take a few deep breaths and realize the thought is not my reality but simply my perception however negative thoughts don't just happen and usually have something to do with the situations that we are put in because let's be honest life is a freaking roller coaster.

2. Negative situations, always look for the silver lining, look at it as a challenge or a test you need to overcome instead of looking at it as a dead-end. Choose to look at it as an opportunity. For example: recently I turned down a job opportunity because it was part-time and I already had a full-time job only for me to find out the very next day that our hours got cut back at my full-time job! At first, I was angry and frustrated but then I asked myself can I control this situation? Is worrying about this going to help me in any way or is it just going to cause me more stress? so what I did is, I made myself a budget and I decided to use the extra time to focus more on writing and my own health and as soon as I figured out a way to look at the situation in a more positive light and took control of my thoughts, I instantly felt better. I did something I was putting off for so long and I finally got the time to be more consistent with my meal preps and my workouts however that wasn't all, I also got hired to help write and edit content for a company from home and it makes up for the money I lost while I still get to keep most of the free time that I'll be getting off from my job. I was shocked with how one little decision to not look at a negative situation negatively brought me so much more growth. I got more done in a month than I did all year simply because I decided not to stress over it? Woah!

So the only way to turn your negative thoughts into positive is to understand that you are in control of your own mind and how you perceive situations is totally up to you! like I mentioned earlier life is all ups and downs and to come back up you have to go back down at some point, before something really good happens something bad usually happens first. It's always darkest before the dawn, as simple as that. It won't happen instantly because we are programmed subconsciously to think negatively if you keep practicing this you will get used to turning negative thoughts into positive and it will become a reflex like it did for me.