Deal With Daily Negativity as you navigate your chores and responsibilities. In the middle of doing something important if your attitude turns negative or you turn self-critical, do this:
- Drop whatever you are doing for few moments.
- Close your eyes and pay attention to the volley of thoughts swirling in your mind.
- Just watch them and look for the space between each thought. Do not manipulate thoughts; let them flow but maintain a watchful attitude.
- Keep focused on the space between thoughts, the calm awareness on which each thought rise and fall. Initially, thought-flow will look seamless, but stay focused without struggling.
- As you watch, you will realize that space between each appearing-and-disappearing thought widens. Thoughts tend to slow down just like waves after a storm. See Brain models of negative thought patterns.
- And as you become more aware of this ‘calm awareness’ underlying the seamless thoughts, your negativity will disappear because you will be getting in touch with your natural self allowing you to deal with daily negativities effectively.
We are often programmed to detect negativities more than positives in our environment. It had helped our ancestors survive the unforgiving times of jungles and predatory animals. So shifting our mind to positive frame requires some effort each day.
Read about I think, Therefore I am (un)happy.
