Seetarn: How to say no to negative thoughts

Have you ever had thoughts whereby, you think the ceiling would just collapse on you, or suddenly a car would come uncontrollably crashing towards you or your loved one. Or even worse, one of your loved ones is not receiving the call, so he/she must be in danger….all this while we are perfectly resting on a weekend, or taking a nap in the noon, or working our butt out at work, or just plainly reading or watching TV or doing some chore…

My question is, how often when we get these thoughts, do any of them ever actually come true…but the potential of these thoughts disrupting our everyday life is next to gigantic and enormous…and at the time we feel powerless, even if these were to last only for a few minutes, but their effect is way too strong for us to deny them, at the onset…But once these thoughts house themselves in our subconscious, they slowly start growing…leaving us breathless and disarmoured to fight the negative feelings..

But there is a way to battle these treacherous monsters…by nipping them in the bud.

Remember when we were kids, our mind was so pure and if at all at night, we used to get any nightmares, and wake up with a sudden shriek, our parents used to run to us and calm us down, and sit beside us and comfort and caress us and tell us that ‘it was just a nightmare, baby, nothing of it will ever come true, you are safe in my hands and no one will ever hurt you, I’m your warrior and you are my princess/prince’..and our childlike innocent hearts used to feel a world of difference when our mom’s/dad’s used to caress us in their arms and subsequently drive our fears away and put us back to sleep…and thus fight the fictional nightmare…with their mere comforting words.

So after growing up, why is that we are unable to resort to the same, actually there is not much difference between a fictional nightmare, and negative thoughts, they are all a figment of our imagination, and the subconscious mind is the guard for the same. When our mind plays tricks on us by creating illusionary situations, which may or may not occur, that’s when our subconscious mind should come into picture, whereby we send positive affirmations to the mind to combat these illusionary monsters…and nip them in the bud..

One of the ways to do that is, simply consider yourself in a different place and in a different situation..and immediately engage your idol self in some physical work..If you are in a middle of an assignment, do not pay much attention to the thought, just give an instruction to your mind to shut the thought or even let it pass by and then ignore the same and physically do some activity or distract yourself from the thought. And then back the same with a positive affirmation by saying, ‘You are a child of god, and god will never give you any challenge which you can’t accept, and you are under his watchful eyes and he will protect you and your loved ones’…

Second do not act on impulse, if you are at work or at home, if your mind plays tricks on you regarding your loved ones, then do not succumb to the pressure of calling incessantly to check on your loved ones. As that would account to giving in to the negative thought and encourage it more. Instead engage yourself in some physical activity. Consider the scenario of the nightmare and the comforting words used by your parents, working miracles with you, when you were a child, so shoot the thought down in the same way, that the fear is irrational and none of it is true or will ever come true. Give this positive affirmation to your mind and you will be relieved of the thought.

Third, do not engage in thoughts of insecurity, trust that you and your family members will always be safe and always give benefit of doubt to the situation, rather than assuming the worst. If someone is unable to attend the call or get in touch with you, then resort to faith and belief in god and yourself, and give the benefit of doubt to the situation the person might be in, say either travelling, the mode of transport might be crowded rendering the person unable to receive the call, or technical difficulty with the instrument, person caught up in a meeting and various other situations. And when your heart is at peace and out of the pounding negative thought, once you are relaxed, give a call to your loved one and speak your heart out, that’s when you would realize that one of your assumptions, regarding the benefit of doubt was indeed true, the person was indeed stuck in a situation, where he/she could not call/or receive calls. This further authenticating the fact about Negative thoughts, just being a figment of one’s imagination..

Just when you feel overridden by the negative thoughts, fill your senses and mind with the thoughts about the good things in your life. When they say diffuse a negative thought and replace it with a positive one, it only means, make the bad feeling go away, by replacing it with all the happy moments of your life, which have actually taken place in your life, and learn to look at your life in retrospect.

Say, when you were a kid, we (believe it or not), for the fear of studies and exams, sometimes used to get nightmares that we would flunk or fail a semester or the finals, but today when you look at yourself, you know that none of those feelings were true. Then as a child, if you used to be gripped with the thought of being taken away from your parents, or the nightmare of losing one of them due to some unfortunate fictional accident, when you look at the situation now, they are all hale and hearty and living well in their 70’s & 80’s, you immediately realize that the fears at the time, were totally irrational, and your parents long life is a living proof of the same.

About one getting the feeling of never passing a certain professional exam, or never getting the spouse they desire, or never getting their dream home, when we look in the retrospect, we come to realize that none of the fears were rational at the time, after we having received all or at-least some of the above, just to prove to us, that most fears are irrational and negative thinking or thoughts are parasitic seeds waiting to grow on our minds and subconscious, but if we act in time and nip them in the bud, then they would be rendered meaningless and powerless.

So, good luck my friends, do convey to me, your methods of tackling and battling with this slow yet poisonous monster, which sometimes, render us restless and eventually giving us an anxiety attack, if not controlled at the right time..