Identifying Your Negative Thoughts - The Affirmation Spot for Thursday March 27, 2008

Today’s Affirmation:

I create my own life everyday and I work hard to create a life full of growth and expansion.

Are you consciously aware of the negative thoughts that are impacting your performance or your happiness in life? Knowing what those thoughts are is the first step in dealing with them.One of the key benefits of affirmations is their ability to replace negative or destructive thoughts with positive and productive thoughts. This process is referred to as "thought replacement" or by psychology professionals as "cognitive restructuring."The process is simple. Let's say you are a baseball player. You have this thought stuck in your mind, "I can't hit curve balls." Well, guess what? When you have a thought like that firmly planted in your mind you are going to struggle to hit curve balls. This is a perfect example of how our thinking can get in the way of our performance.Affirmations are a very powerful thought replacement tool because you can - through repetition of a countering positive thought - replace the thought, "I can't hit curve balls," with a thought like, "I am a great curve ball hitter."Notice that the skill to hit curve balls is present, but the belief by the player that he or she can is limiting performance. In a case where actual skill is the issue, an affirmation such as, "I get better at hitting curve balls each and every day," is more effective.When the negative thoughts or negative thinking process is obvious it's easy to figure out what kinds of affirmations you need to counter them. Sometimes, however, the negative thinking is a bit more cloudy. You know it's there and that it's impacting some aspect of your life, but are not consciously aware of the problematic thoughts.There are several effective techniques for uncovering your negative thoughts and getting them out in the open so you can deal with them.Here are a three techniques you can use to expose your negative thoughts so that you can deal with them.

Journaling - journaling is an effective way to get feelings out of your mind and into the real world for analysis. You may think your internal thinking is catching your true thoughts and feelings, but journaling can really surprise you.
Recording - while journaling is a conscious effort to write down thoughts and feelings at an assigned time, recording is making note of the negative thoughts that occur to you as you go through your day. Try stopping and writing down every negative thought that comes into your mind for a day. You will be shocked at how many there are. Don't beat yourself up over it. We all have negative thoughts. It's not having negative thoughts that is the problem. It's how we deal with them.
Affirmation Therapy - this is one I've used to great effect. I've never seen it mentioned in any professional literature. If there is an area of your life that you know is causing you trouble, start using some affirmations targeted to that area of your life and wait. A natural process that occurs when you use affirmations is that the negative thoughts (conscious or unconscious) rise to challenge the positive thought for their supremacy. This causes the negative thought to come out into the open.
Meditation - meditation or a quiet time with eyes closed is another effective way to identify negative thoughts. Just sit and "thought watch". You will experience a whole range of thoughts from euphoric to depressing (the mind is an active thing). Write down the negative thoughts you observe and want to deal with.

Be peaceful Be prosperous Be positive!RayThe Affirmation Spot.com

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