All of my friends know that I really loathe negativity. It is just so terribly destructive. I think for me what adds insult to injury about negativity is that it is in fact unnecessary. The only positive thing that negativity does is to demonstrate the importance of having a positive attitude; a kind of "unless you see the effect of negativity you cannot fully appreciate the benefits of positivity". I can no more see a useful outcome from the experience of negativity than I can from feelings of guilt.
The effect of negativity is so ably demonstrated in the game of golf. If you hear someone saying "it's just not happening for me today" you don't even need to raise your head or glance in their direction to find out where their next shot is going to go. Negativity breeds negativity; it sets of a whole chain of reaction and things go from bad to worse. This of course makes it increasingly more difficult to break the cycle.
Negativity seems to come naturally to the human psyche. If you have a lot of great things going on in your life and one solitary bad one, which is the one that you think about most? And the simple act of thinking about it effectively magnifies it in your awareness, triggering all sorts of uncomfortable emotions and sensations throughout your physiology. Reverting to how ably negativity can be displayed in golf you will notice how shoulders slump, heads droop, jaws clench, the swing speeds up and jerky movements take over. All because of one little thought which popped into your mind...and you weren't able to tell it to GO AWAY!
Negativity has to be fought with positivity, blow by blow. Negativity can also be fought with your imagination. Negativity can be warded off with the implementation of either curiosity or creative thinking. If you have a natural inclination to be curious, like a child, instead of being negative you find yourself asking "what happened there?" Reverting to golf (my apologies to non golfers, but this really does demonstrate the point rather well) this is a really useful question to ask; you increase awareness of the club face and how you applied it to the ball, and this enables you to learn and leads to making positive change and progression.
Your imagination can be employed in an extremely powerful and positive way which works well either on its own or when combined with curiosity. If something is upsetting you or you find yourself sinking into the dense and murky waters of negativity, you can use your imagination to rewind the pictures which are playing in your mind and imagine a different outcome instead. You can deliberately replace the negative movie which you are running with a bright, new positive picture. Your imagination is like a life-jacket which keeps you floating on the surface of the water insted of sinking down into those murky depths.
The greatest thing of all about this mental technique is that your mind does not know the difference between something which is real and something which is vividly imagined. So just by imagining the outcome you would like to have experienced, your brain feels as if this has really happened and triggers off all those chemicals and hormones which make you feel fantastic. Just as negativity triggers a rather nasty physiological response throughout your body, these positive visualizations trigger off equally powerful sensations; although this time they are good feeling sensations.
When something negative is happening you do not have to dwell upon it, thereby making it a whole lot worse. You can arm yourself with a great arsenal of weapons with which to fight negativity. Curiosity is one, and creative visualization is another. These just wipe the bad feelings away. Positive affirmations can also be helpful as they refocus the mind and help you to see things from a different angle. As a last resort if you just cannot seem to change how you are thinking about a particular thing, then you can choose to think about something completely different instead.
If you are prone to negative thoughts, and would like to become more positive, hypnosis can be a very great buddy. Hypnosis is a state of relaxation which is normal and natural. You pass through hypnosis as you go to sleep and as you wake up. Hypnosis makes it easier to change habitual thought patterns and reactions and also allows you to train your mind to respond in new and powerful ways.
Roseanna Leaton, specialist in hypnosis mp3 downloads designed to promote positive thinking, happiness and success.
With a degree in psychology and qualifications in hypnotherapy and NLP, Roseanna Leaton is one of the leading practitioners of self-improvement. You can get a free hypnosis mp3 from http://www.RoseannaLeaton.com and find how to overcome negativity and be more positive.