The brain is a tool used to facilitate life here on earth. We are meant to come to life for the sake of expansion. But we could not stay here long enough to expand or grow if we could not stay alive here on earth. For this reason, our brain is programmed at its most primary level for survival. Things that pose a threat have more of an impact on the brain. It is much more concerned with what is going wrong than with what is going right. If it senses any danger it goes into fight or flight mode. The brain then becomes fixated on potential threats. We become hyper focused on the negative and trying to focus positively becomes very, very hard. This natural and rather biological start to negative focus sometimes spirals due to the fixation on threat. It creates a negative feedback loop.
If you have felt safe most of your life, it does not take you effort to feel good. Your brain is not in survival mode trying to avoid danger by worrying and negative focus and pessimism. However, if you have been hurt, experienced trauma or not felt safe, it will take effort to feel good. Your brain is locked in survival mode. It is trying to stay safe and avoid danger by worrying, negative focus and pessimism. It is a vicious cycle that leads you into a waking hell.
The big problem is this: The brain is an efficiency tool. It loves to take thoughts that are thought often or actions that are repetitive and make them immediate and subconscious. Repetition (such as repetitive negative focus) trains the brain to do that thing immediately without your conscious attention. It creates habit. When you think the same thing or focus the same way or do the same thing over and over, the brain recognizes a pattern and wires itself for that pattern. This is why neuroscientists so often say, the neurons that fire together become wired together. When this happens it becomes easier to activate this circuit in your brain the next time and even easier the next time and even easier the next time. Eventually the negative focus neuronal pathway becomes your unconscious default. It has been ‘programmed’ into your mind. Like code is programmed into a computer.
When we experience a trauma in our lives, even if we have practiced positive focus in the past, we will often revert to this primitive ‘lookout for danger’ negative focus strategy. So don’t be surprised if you get hurt in life and you subsequently experience this downward spiral after the fact. Heartbreak is especially notorious for tripping this program. The heart is full of neurons. The heart tells the brain what to think. When you experience a trauma related to love, the heart will inform the brain to go into ‘self protection mode’. For this reason, it’s a good idea to watch my video on YouTube titled: “Heart Meditation”. Stress also causes us to default to this primitive programming. So reduce stress in your life in any way that you can as well.
In the beginning of trying to change your negative focus, the portion of your brain called the prefrontal cortex will have to use conscious will to override the old pattern or ‘code’ in your brain until the code shifts and new neurons wire together creating a positive focus neural circuit that then becomes the unconscious default of your brain.
To begin this process, we need to employ an energy healing technique where we have someone else sit down with your head in their hands. Do this daily if you can or as frequently as possible. Have them connect to your brain specifically. Then they focus on healing the negativity. Allow this healing process to be highly intuitive. That being said, they can either remove the negativity and then replace it with positivity. Or they can focus intensely on positivity from the get go, creating a frequency that is so dominant that it forces the frequency of your own brain to change to match it. For example, they think of something that causes them to feel immensely happy. They could then focus that positive energy through their hands and into your brain. Have them maintain this focus until they feel a sense of “completeness”. Music can also work quite well to help intensify the experience. If they feel inclined to energetically send any messages through to the brain such as “the universe loves you or everything is happening to help you”, encourage then to do so. Also, have them experiment with different hand positions until they find the one that allows for the best infusion of positivity into the brain. I find working with the temples and cerebellum works amazingly for this.
The strong, high frequency energy of the positivity they have focused into your brain causes the low frequency, negative energy in your brain to change. You can think of it like music. Experiencing the infusion of positivity, forces the low frequency tone of negativity to come into alignment and resonate with the new high frequency tone of positivity.
You can also do this on yourself. I find that when we are in our most intense negative spirals, we are often unsuccessful at thinking or focusing anything positive, and so it is better to have someone else be the one to do it. However, as time goes on, we can place or own hands on our heads and begin energetically healing our own brain. We can diffuse our own brain with positivity and alter our negative neural pathways.
The next thing we need to do is to intentionally find the positive in the negative. Torture is pain without purpose. It is pain without meaning. If we can find a positive meaning for the pain we experienced, we will not see life as a threat and we will come out of fight or flight mode. So take the things or circumstances in your life that have caused you pain one by one and with each one, search diligently for the positive meaning inherent in that circumstance. How did it serve you? List every single positive aspects of it that you can think of.
If you are currently experiencing something negative or painful, search deliberately for the positive possibilities that could come. When we are negatively focusing, we begin to succumb to doom. We project negativity into our future. It’s important that we also see the positive potential in our future. List all potential positive outcomes for the situation you are in. And watch my videos on YouTube titled, “How To Stop Worrying” and “How To Stop Expecting The Worst”.
The next thing you need to do is to sit in meditation and find the aspect of yourself that is thinking negatively chronically because it is terrified. Find the aspect of you that is trying desperately to avoid being hurt because it has been so hurt before. Where does it live inside your body? Ask this aspect of you, “What would be so bad about being positive or about positive focus?” Talk to and validate and focus love and protection to and around this aspect of yourself.
The next thing you need to do is to start and end your day with a gratitude list. If we succumb to negative focus, this is hard to do. But any little thing that we can say we like or enjoy is progress. When we are ready, we can make this part of our day. Periodically, we can scan our environment on a kind of mental scavenger hunt for things we like or appreciate. Look for anything that causes you to feel the slightest hint of relief.
Create safety in your life. Identify the areas of your life that make you feel the most emotionally, mentally or physically unsafe and deliberately take steps to make those areas of your life feel more safe. Write a safety list; a long list of things that make you to feel safe. For example, a warm bath, sitting with the covers pulled over your head, compression, being held, the smell of chamomile, watching the food network etc. And spend time each day engaging with at least one of the things you put on that list. If you ever feel unsafe, go to the list and pick something off of it to do at that minute. This will help to turn off the part of your brain that is wired for negative focus.
Also, if you can, take actions that help you to shift focus when you are in a downward spiral. Get out of the house, play music that shifts your mood, watch a movie, visit a friend etc.
Negative is not bad. If it were bad, the primitive brain would not wire itself for negative hypervigilance. When we get into trouble is when our negative focus does not alert us to proactive changes we can make and ways to stay safe, but rather instills in us a world view of danger. A worldview of pain. This is when positive focus becomes necessary.
Those of us who are caught in the negativity trap have a few core beliefs that turn our life to ruins. The first is: The world is dangerous. The second is: The universe is against me. The third is: If I focus positively, I’ll get hurt. We need to deliberately change these core beliefs. To find out how to do this, watch my video on YouTube titled: How To Change a Belief.
There is a very subtle nuance we have to understand. Positive focus becomes a tool that serves resistance if it is being used to avoid negative. In this case, it only fuels the negative. But if it is being used as a tool to deliberately create the experience you want or to shut down the part of the brain that is in negative hypervigilance mode or to heal from trauma, it can in fact restore you back to a state of empowerment and wholeness.
