It seems like a logical assumption. The problem is that whatever we resist, we feed the energy of our focus to and thus, it persists. We have made negative thoughts the bad guy. We’re afraid of these thoughts and we’re afraid of how they make us feel and so we want to try to get rid of them and deny them and push them away or fight them with positive thoughts and is it working? Hell no.
It does no good to try to cut off or deny an aspect of yourself. This creates a fracture within you when integration and wholeness is the true direction of healing. It is the opposite of love. By labeling something as bad, you feel repelled by it and this aversion in fact ads negative energy to negative thoughts, which gives birth to a negative spiral. And it is understandable that if you frequently get into these kinds of negative spirals, you may literally feel like your mind is your worst enemy, which is why I want you to watch my YouTube video titled: Is your mind your friend or foe?
But for the sake of reducing your resistance to your negative thoughts, we are going to proceed with a brand new premise…. Negative thoughts are good. How is this possible?
1. As humans, we are wired to find, recognize and fix problems. We are designed to turn the unwanted into the wanted. This is why our species has evolved and adapted the world to us like it has. This is in fact the platform for universal expansion. It is also the basis of species evolution. If all we saw and recognized was perfection, there would be no progression, no change, no forward movement. New ideas and inventions and possibilities are always the byproduct of first recognizing problems. And negative thoughts can in fact focus and motivate us towards our aim.
2. It is the negative thoughts we think that are painful enough to make us question ourselves and question the thoughts themselves. This questioning inevitably leads to the dis-identification between the thinker and the thoughts themselves. So we could say that negative thoughts make us aware that there are two perspectives present within us and thus, we wake up to the truth of ourselves beyond the temporal reality. We realize I am not my thoughts. Negative thinking therefore can give birth to an awakening.
3. Negative thoughts are often reflections of an emotion that needs to surface from the subconscious to the conscious mind and be integrated. Things like jealousy, despair, hopelessness, sadness or fear. We need to recognize these strong emotional sensations in the body and embrace them as well. To fully accomplish this, I want you to watch 2 of my videos on YouTube. The first is titled: Positively Embrace your Negative Emotions. And the second is titled: How to Heal the Emotional Body.
4. Negative thoughts are an invitation to learn unconditional love. Glossing over the negative thoughts with positive ones doesn’t work. Suppressing and denying them makes them fester. And they represent aspects of our being that need to be heard and felt and so, eventually, we must end our war with them. When we can learn to project love through and around the aspect of ourself that thinks negative thoughts (or even the negative thoughts themselves) we are practicing unconditional love. We are not making our love of our mental aspect conditioned upon whether it is positive and feeling good.
5. There are many different kinds of negative thoughts but they all have one thing in common… they are designed to alert us to something we wish to avoid. Negative thoughts are designed to keep us safe. The question is… from what? So next time you think a negative thought ask yourself, how is this thought trying to keep me safe? What is it trying to keep me safe from? For example, a thought that is self-critical may be trying to keep you safe from embarrassment. Or a thought that is about a worst-case scenario, may be trying to keep you safe from experiencing the very scenario it conjures. The kind of thought that most directly exists to try to keep you safe is worry. For this reason, you might want to watch my video on YouTube titled: How To Stop Worrying
6. And now we come to the most important point… Every negative thought, especially complaint, is in fact an indirect voicing of one’s needs and wants and as such it points you in the direction of your purpose. The time has come to consider that this part of yourself is telling you something very important and valuable about yourself. What part of you do you reject by turning away from negative thoughts? Like a compass, your negative thoughts and subsequent emotions are letting you know which way you should NOT go. They refuse to let you stray from the path of your purpose and joy. We can use this to our advantage. Not only do we have a clear vision of what way to NOT go in life, we also can use that clarity of what is not wanted to decipher what direction TO go on life… which is towards our wants and needs. Our journey is greatly assisted by being aware of what we want and need. So each time you recognize the negative thought, ask yourself, what is this letting me know that I want or need and how can I more directly meet that need or want?
You are never going to get rid of your negative thoughts. Believing that you must not think negative thoughts makes them repetitive and obsessive. It is however within your capacity to not regard them as absolute truth, but instead as the subjective perspective held by an aspect within yourself that is currently in pain. These thoughts are valid but not necessarily true. And they need loving care. Embrace rather than suppress your negative thoughts and you will no longer be at their mercy.