Dealing With Negative and Unhelpful Thoughts

The Spiral of Negative Thinking and False Beliefs About Ourselves.

Often, we are dealing with feelings of, thoughts of  ” I am not good enough.  Every one is better than me. I can’t do it, they are so good.  I am so weak.  I finding this all too hard to do.”  The problem with these thoughts is that they are not helpful to us.  They make us feel even worse about ourselves.   Then, we repeat them again and again, and we get into spiral of negative thinking.

Not once do we challenge the thought ” I am not good enough”.  Well, who said so ?   “Oh , I said so”,  But, who else is saying that?   We begin to live in “our own little world ” and the  thoughts just spiral out of control and we let them.  And we become sensitive to everything.

There is NOTHING wrong with us.  We have being creating wrong beliefs about ourselves for a very long time.  These thoughts most likely  happened,  because we have had one too many challenge in our life that have slowly broken us and we have simply maxed out. The good news is , that these thoughts/feeling can be changed.  They are not permanent.

Challenging our Negative Thinking

When you find yourself whirling out of control with your negative thinking and feeling of self value.   You need to stop and challenge yourself.  Take a piece of paper and

1. Write down the unhelpful thought
2. Write down why you feel that way
3. Write down why you think it is unhelpful
4. Then turn it into an affirmation:

For example:

1. The negative thought is ” I am not good at cooking”,
2. Why do I feel that way :  ” I messed up dinner again”.
3. Why is it unhelpful – well, most of the time I am a great cook.  But today I was a bit off, and feeling low.  This is not an every day thing.
4. Affirmation:  I am a good cook,  I love cooking,  I rock at cooking.  I am confident and I recognise I  have off days.  Today was just an off day.

The above exercise should be done regularly, that is every time you have a feeling of low self esteem.  It will help you identify the unhelpful thoughts and will help you change your thought patterns.  It will become easier in time  to set yourself  straight and break the pattern of these thoughts.   The great thing is that this will become a tool for life.

How to Build Up Your Self Esteem and Self Worth- With the Positive Log Book

Ask  three or two extremely close friends or family who love you dearly and know you inside out.   Ask them to write 10 or more of  your positive qualities on a piece of paper, for you.

When you read these  qualities you might feel a bit surprised, shocked and even tearful.   This comes back to, our perception of ourself is out of whack!  We forget our beauty, we forget our capacity. 

How create  the positive log book?

Buy a nice note book say A5 so that you can carry it around with you.  Write on the top of each page one of the positive characteristic/qualities your loved ones have mentioned.  Choose 7 in total – you may want to group likes ones together.   Then ever day write an example of those 7 qualities you carried out in that day.  Do this as long as it takes to fill each piece of paper .   Once you have finished a sheet of paper , you might want to select 7  more qualities and do this exercise again with seven more qualities.  Do this for a  minimum 2 months.  Of course you can do this longer.

For example,  some of the qualities  are caring, kind, helpful, take pleasure in small things, is clever, bright, not a afraid to try new things.

1. So on the top of one page you write caring & kind,
2. and the next your write helpful, next page write pleasure in small things,
3. next page clever & bright
4. and the next page not afraid to try new things.

Then, watch yourself in the day, and write an example of those qualities you observed in yourself that day:

1. So under Helpful  I write,  I was helpful today when I helped an old man with his shopping.
2. I could also write this under small things (help the old man).
3. Clever and Bright :  I started a blog and put my first image
4. (this could also be used for not afraid to try new things)

The point of this exercise is to help you see your self worth,  and allow you to develop your worth again.   When we loose ourself  we forget how to value ourself.   So, in a way we need to re-establish our relationship with ourselves again.

Thank you for stopping by .  Please comment, like, share, or subscribe to this blog.  I would love to know your thoughts, insights , advice – as these may be helpful to all who stumble across is post.

Other useful post

• The Power of Journaling
• Resilience
• The Mood Roller Coaster
• Fear – Procrastination – Paralzyed
• Change and Acceptance
• The Life Train
• Traffic Control your Thoughts!
• The Power of Routines
• Mirror – Others are said to be A Mirror for us.

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