8 Tips of Overcoming Negative Thoughts in Your Life

The things that we strongly believe in can either create or destroy. However, most of the times these beliefs tend to hold us back and reinforce negative feelings such as those of failure, fear and apathy. Therefore, instead of letting these negative beliefs control your life, you need to face them head on.

Beliefs originate from a number of sources and can be enhanced by the people around us, the books we read and even social networks that we are on. Regardless of the source, below are seven proven ways of overcoming these negative beliefs.

1. Identify Influencers

Self-improvement can only be achieved if you live your life free from the controlling effect of your beliefs. To overpower these beliefs, it is then paramount that you identify the factors that influence them. Is it the people that you surround yourself with that solidify them? Identifying influencers can help you address them and make the right changes in your life.

2. Arouse Your Curiosity

After you have explored what fuels your beliefs, curiosity is then important in helping you question how you move away from negative beliefs that hold you back and embrace positive ones that support your vision and potential. Being curious is also key in seeing different possibilities that can make negative beliefs positive.

3. Establish if They Are Fact of Fiction

Are your beliefs factual or fictional? The reason many people hold onto beliefs is because they believe that at one point they may have been valid. As much as this could be true, these beliefs also change as people and situations change and thus could be useless today. Figuring out if your beliefs are actually valid is also the right step towards having a positive attitude in life.

4. Isolate Negative Beliefs

When you have negative experiences and people who are fuelling negative beliefs in your life, they can grow bigger and more powerful. How do you prevent that? Isolate your beliefs by determining if they hold any substance then work through them.

5. Find Evidence

Finding evidence is crucial when it comes to overpowering negative beliefs. Since most of them have become a part of your life, you can only get rid of them if you can find evidence that proves they are invalid. Instead on being emotional about them, face them with logic and list all the reasons that invalidate them. This provides an internal release from the power of the beliefs.

6. Reframe Your Beliefs

It is not easy to let go off negative beliefs even after identifying them. Luckily, reframing them can help you overcome them. Reframe the beliefs in a way that supports you is an effective way of making it supportive and purposeful.

7. Move On

When you give negative beliefs power, they will continue to hold you back and control your life. Given that the past does not influence the future unless we let it, you need to let it go and move on no matter how hard it may be.

8. Smile

Simply by bringing a smile to the face of another human being, your faith in the goodness of others is suddenly and subtly restored. It creates a “pattern interrupt” of habitual negative thinking. You’ll find yourself more optimistic about both the nature of others and of your place among them.

These eight tips are crucial for managing and getting rid of negative belief sin your life. If you cannot change them, then it is paramount that you learn to live with them without giving them power over your life so that you can go on achieving your goals.