Positive Thinking Exercises

Positive Thinking Exercises: Stop Those Negative Thoughts

No matter how hard you attempt to think positively, it will be difficult unless you learn to spot and stop negative thoughts. There are many positive thinking exercises that will help. One of them, learning how to spot your negative thoughts, is explained here.

Why Is It Important to Combat Negative Thoughts?

It’s important to combat negative thoughts because they serve a destructive function in your life. For most of you, thinking negatively is a subconscious habit. Bad thoughts do their harm while you are totally unaware. In fact, as you are reading this, you may be thinking that you're not very negative, but you could be wrong.

Negative thoughts, even the small ones, can be one cause of the struggles you are having in your life. If you stop and think about it, you'll find that you're being more pessimistic than you realized.

How to Recognize Negative Thoughts

Here are examples of thoughts that show you may be looking at things negatively:

• I’m unlucky.
• It's definitely going to rain today now that I've made plans.
• I’m bound to make a mistake on this project.
• I’m not good enough.
• I’m not important.
• Nothing I try ever works out.
• I’m not pretty.
• I’m too tall/too short/too fat, etc…

These are but a few of the myriad negative thoughts that fall into the negative thinking spectrum. You can fix them once you have recognized them. Positive thinking exercises are intended to alleviate this kind of thinking and replace it with a more objective and constructive alternative.

Take Baby Steps

Start your journey toward positive thinking with baby steps. At first, simply be aware of your negative thoughts without trying to change or stop them. As the saying goes, knowing there’s a problem is half the battle. It’s the first step in deviating from the negative thought pattern that you have been stuck in. Jot down the bad thoughts you notice – both big and little. This will help you recognize the most common ones and will give you more material to focus on as you move forward through your positive thinking exercises.

Positive thinking exercises, such as recognizing and stopping your negative thoughts may not seem important initially, but they are very useful. When you understand your negative thought patterns, you can shift them towards something more positive.