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These three strategies, POSITIVE THINKING, RATIONAL THINKING, AND THOUGHT AWARENESS which is all related, help overcome negative thinking. Negative thinking produces stress because it undermines your belief that you can complete the task at hand.
When you tear yourself down, condemn yourself for mistakes, doubt your talents, expect failure, and so on, you are having negative thoughts. Negative thinking is the flip side of suggestion; it erodes self-esteem, impairs performance, and paralyzes mental abilities.
Meaning of Thought Awareness
Thought Awareness is the practice of paying attention to your thoughts for some time, perhaps when you’re stressed and becoming aware of what’s going on in your mind. It’s better not to suppress any thoughts; instead, notice them as they arise.
Some of the most valuable thoughts we can have are awareness thoughts. They are the result of observation, reflection, and realization. Awareness thoughts, according to Tolle, are our most spiritual thoughts. It’s possible to argue that a condition of Awareness isn’t technically thought at all. We could discover a sense of oneness and calm by staying still and paying close attention to our inner visions. Meditation is a way to achieve this level of Awareness.
However, Awareness can lead to beneficial, creative, and even practical ideas. Thoughts that detect and solve issues emerge from Awareness, leading to appropriate actions. We noticed that water runs downhill a long time ago in human evolution, and we utilized that knowledge to our advantage in physical survival. Recently, scientists have observed that the polar ice caps are melting at an accelerated rate and that the melting ice caps will lead to a significant rise in the level of our oceans.
This Awareness has led us to a renewed consciousness of the urgency to reverse this trend. These are the kinds of practical thoughts that come out of conscious awareness and result in more effective actions. Without these thoughts, we might never have discovered how to renew water resources or reduce hydrocarbons in our atmosphere.
Practical Examples of Thought Awareness
The Miracle on the Hudson
It might be challenging to imagine how an awareness thought could not be of benefit. It depends on how we react to our Awareness. The recent “Miracle on the Hudson” is a superb example of extraordinary functional thinking and action out of Awareness. Not only did the US Airways’ pilot perform a perfect emergency splashdown, but it also appears that the attendants and passengers reacted equally as well. Had there been panic, some or many lives may have been lost. Awareness of the need to remain calm and follow the standard procedures for the safe evacuation of the airplane saved the lives of all the passengers and the crew.
The Avoidable Loss of Lives in the Station nightclub in Rhode Island in 2003
Unfortunately, the loss of life in the Station nightclub in Rhode Island in 2003 resulted from a dysfunctional reaction to the Awareness of a fire and the need to evacuate the building. There was panic. The crowd stampeded to the main entrance, the door they entered to the concert, where many persons were crushed, blocking what nearly everyone believed to be their only escape route. There were at least three other exits. Had the nightclub crowd functioned as well as the attendants and passengers of the US Airways flight, perhaps they too would have lived a miracle.
Thought Awareness Enable Us to do More always.
Awareness often helps to facilitate increased joy in our lives. We might note that we feel joyful when our grandchildren arrive for a visitor that we feel a deep sense of satisfaction when we contribute to efforts to reduce world hunger. This kind of Awareness enhances the joy and stimulates the desire to repeat the Awareness to our benefit, our grandchildren, and humanity as a whole.
Thought Awareness Enable us Control Our Emotions
We might become aware that every time we lose our temper, we pay the consequence of stress. So, we are determined to take a more positive perspective on what we previously allowed to anger us. We might also notice that our more positive attitude produces more positive reactions in other persons, creating a self-perpetuating increase in tolerance and respect around us.
Our Growth is Enhanced With thought Awareness.
Growth begins with building awareness. Indeed, the greater the attention, the better are the chances that we will achieve our goals. The process of understanding is like shining a light where there has always been darkness. The revelations can be remarkable and miraculous in the process of healing and renewal.
Be Wary Of The Negative Thoughts
Watch for negative thoughts while you observe your ‘stream of consciousness. Usually, these appear and disappear from time to time. In most cases, you would be utterly oblivious of their presence. Here are some examples of common negative thoughts:
- Self-consciousness about how you appear to others
- A fixation on the signs and symptoms of stress
- Ruminating on the ramifications of bad performance
- Criticism of oneself
- A sense of insufficiency
- Make a mental note of the concept, and then continue with your stream of consciousness.
Thought awareness is the first step toward overcoming bad ideas; you can’t fight what you don’t know you’re thinking.
Rational Thinking
Once you’ve identified your negative ideas, write them down and critically examine them. Examine whether the statements are grounded in reality. When you correctly challenge negative notions, you’ll often discover that they’re incorrect. They often persist solely because they go unnoticed.
Positive Thinking and Affirmation
Positive affirmations may help combat negative thinking. Affirmations can help you gain confidence and turn negative habits into positive ones. You can use affirmations to repair the harm that negative thinking has done to your self-confidence by basing them on straightforward, sensible appraisals of facts. Claims include the following:
- This is something I’m capable of.
- I am capable of achieving my objectives.
- I am who I am, and others will like me for who I am.
- My life is entirely under my control.
- I am a firm believer in learning from my mistakes. They broaden my experience base from which I can draw.
- In my own right, I am a highly valued individual.
Positive thinking has long been promoted as if it were a panacea for all problems. It must be applied with caution. Positive thinking will not turn everyone into an Olympic marathon winner (Though an Olympic marathon runner is improbable to have gotten this far without being a master of positive thinking). Decide logically what goals you can achieve with hard work, and then use positive thinking to reinforce those goals.
Your Awareness Of Negative Thoughts Will Not Stop Them.
According to the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, one of the world’s finest brain research facilities, the average person has 70,000 thoughts each day, corresponding to nearly 25 and a half million views per year. The most astonishing aspect of this is the vast number of spontaneous ideas and the fact that we are unaware of what we think regularly. If we examined our studies, we might be surprised to learn how many of them, even if they are only fleeting thought impulses, contain the seeds of negative, stressful thoughts like worry, anxiety, dread, upset, annoyance, or uncertainty.
Because of our insatiable desire to think, most of us, especially in our western capitalistic society, devote much too much time to worthless, dysfunctional thoughts. In reality, practically everyone has obsessive thinking in some form or another. Although we may not be clinically diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tolle argues that our unconscious, never-ending stream of thoughts is spiritually defective.
Conclusion
Find a comfortable place to sit and relax your neck and shoulders by sitting with your back straight. Assume you’re sitting on a platform outside a crowded railway station. You observe many trains coming into the station and a lot of trains departing the station as you look around. Many people are getting off the trains, and there are also many people getting on the trains. You get the picture; it’s a crowded railway station. Then it hits you: this train station is eerily similar to your thinking. Both have a lot of action going on, and if you aren’t paying attention, you can become lost in either the train station or your head.
Observe how some of your thoughts, like trains, enter your mind’s station quickly and loudly, their whistles booming. Other ideas, like more miniature trains, come in at a slower pace.
Also, observe how some thoughts become trapped and tend to linger in your mind for an extended period, similar to trains stuck in a station for an extended period. When you catch yourself becoming hooked on a particular thought, gently send it on its way with an imaginary wave of a flag, similar to what a station helper may do. You might also notice that some of your thoughts are linked together, like a line of train coal cars that are all the same color and transporting the same stuff. Negative, sound, and neutral ideas are arranged in rows.
Take care not to board any of the trains; instead, observe them from the station. If you find yourself unintentionally boarding a train or flying past the station on a train, gently direct your attention back to your seat on the platform, where you can observe the trains. Be kind to yourself since it’s very typical for people, especially those who have been practicing mindfulness and meditation for a long time, to become sidetracked by their thoughts.
If you detect many stressful or unpleasant ideas, let them into your train station for a short time so you can observe them and then send them on their way. You don’t have to try to modify your thoughts right now. Allow them to pass through. However, as you pause to think and later observe specific painful thought patterns, you may envision yourself shifting the train tracks to allow those patterns to go away, making room for some more pleasant and empowering thought trains.
To start thinking about what you’re thinking about, try viewing the thought train exercise as many times as you need to. The frequency of harmful or even neutral ideas should not frighten you. For millions of years, our brains have been wired in this way. However, recognizing old disempowering thought patterns is the first step toward breaking them. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to welcome some bright, dazzling thought trains into your station.
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