Hyderabad Blues: [HM:254040] Reasons for Negative Thoughts

Friday, 6 July 2012

[HM:254040] Reasons for Negative Thoughts - How to Avoid

I have noticed in my 33 years of life that human mind tends to think negative more as compared to positive. There are several contributing factors for negative thinking such as, bad official or personal circumstance, financial issues , medical problems and/or family bonding. In this article I am going to touch some of issues which lead human mind towards negativity, consequently killing the peace of mind.

Personal Circumstances: Once I read somewhere that life is what 20% happens to you and 80% how you react to it. Its true; believe me. Its only our own thinking & reactions responsible for our peace of mind. No matter what are the circumstances, there is always a way out. My personal approach to fix the BIG issues is to break the BIG issue into several smaller issues and start fixing one by one; one at a time. Always remember that keep thinking negative on issues will keep increasing the weight of the problems. It's just like holding the glass of water for one minute compared to holding this for one hour. If you hold a glass for one hour, your shoulder and arm will start paining. This is how your negative thoughts kills your brain and takes away your peace of mind.

Misunderstanding: there is a quote: "I am responsible for what I said but not responsible for what you understood". I personally agree with this however I would like to add that the responsibility falls on both, the speaker and the listener . The speaker is to make sure that he has elaborated his point very well by using right words and proper details. The Listener is to make sure that he understands things correctly. In case of ambiguity, he needs to ask again, even again if something is unclear else there is a serious chance that a negative thing is going to be concluded. Clarity in our day to day communication can definitely wash away the element of misunderstanding. So I stop this paragraph with famous quote "Seek first to understand and then to be understood"

Financial Limitations: Life is beautiful, we make it tough by putting a lot of weight by adding more and more wishes into it. I would suggest always try to differentiate between Needs and Wants. Try to live in your needs and you won't be sad again. Another advice would be to think of less-fortunate people quite often instead of always dreaming about rich people. If you want to become rich, start working on it by preparing a concrete plan, however don't let this plan & actions to steal your peace of mind. Don't allow your brain to adopt short cuts which are based on negative strategies. Negative approaches result in negative outcomes; sooner or later so be positive and adopt positive approaches.

Family Relations: Having healthy family relations is a real blessing. This is something you can find hundreds of books in the market or on internet. However, I must say that each one of us must learn the tips and techniques to have healthy family relationships. A straight forward approach to resolve small conflicts is to 'Convince or Get Convinced'. There shouldn't be anything in between. For the bigger issues, the suggestion is to break the problem in small issues and fix it one by one, as stated earlier.

Further, we must develop the power of patience in ourselves. Patience also means listening other empathetically and understand other's point of view. This helps conclude right things.

Office Stress: I have developed my own formula to manage office stress in order to reduce/fix the negative thoughts and stress. The formulae is that for any given situation apply two filters to the problem. First filter is to ask yourself whether this issue is really something I should be worried about. If not, just drop and you are done. Second filter is that can I "Park" this problem for sometime so I can concentrate on other things and use my healthy brain for other positive things. 'Parking' has some advantages… for example, you are controlling your mind not to think of this particular issue for the time being and hence avoiding negativity and stress. Sometimes the issues are resolved at their own as we move along. However, if any issue really needs to be fixed then we should develop the power of analyzing the situation at Work Break Down level so that we can fix all small issues which are the root cause of the original issue.

Article written by Junaid Tahir (mjunaidtahir -at- gmail.com). Feel free to share your feedback.

Conclusion: No one is in charge of your happiness except you so control your thoughts since thoughts are the driving force for your actions which are defining your character and character is the most important ingredient of your destiny.

Article written by Junaid Tahir (mjunaidtahir -at- gmail.com). Feel free to share your feedback