How can you change a negative mindset to a positive mindset? Someone asked me this question recently.
I believe our brains are wired to focus on the negative because back in the day, when we were hunters and gatherers, thinking every noise in the night was a predator and every stranger was dangerous to us gave us an advantage over more relaxed cave-dwellers.
For most of us in the US today, our survival does not depend on our hyper-focus on the negative.
Today, a negative mindset is an obstacle to living a long and happy life, unlike in our evolutionary past.
But how do we switch from a negative mindset to a positive one?
The answer is the same as the answer to that old joke, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Practice, my friends, practice.
First, we have to practice developing an awareness of our negative thinking. We need to notice when we think things like:
- “Bad things always happen to me.”
- “I’ll never get ahead.”
- “She didn’t say, ‘hi.’ I bet she hates me.”
Once we become aware of every negative thought, as soon as we think it (this takes a lot of practice!), we can move on to step two: Question the thought:
“Bad things always happen to me?” Is that really true? Didn’t I just get a raise at work? Didn’t I just find $5 in the laundry?”
Oh, yeah, I guess sometimes good things happen to me.
Once we start questioning our negative thoughts, we can see that our negative thoughts are not necessarily true and we will see the positive thoughts we think can be just as true or truer.
Because of the way our brains work, just noticing that the negative thought either isn’t true or is possibly not true makes the positive thought more believable.
Gradually we start noticing positive thoughts more and more, or at least moving from a negative thought to a positive thought more easily.
This is a simple practice, but it must be sustained, over months and years.
The benefit of this practice is actually experiencing the moments of our lives, rather than worrying about things that almost never happen or ruminating over things we can’t change and missing out on all that is going on right now.