OF TWO MINDS

I really am of two minds about some things. For example I am of two minds about seeing the Rose Bowl Parade. Part of me thinks I should watch it on TV; part of me thinks I should go to Pasadena on New Year’s Day and see it live. Watching on TV leaves you at the mercy of the producers of the show who only let you see what they want you to see. Going to the parade is very different, and while you get to see it up close and personal, you are at the mercy of the crowds. Neither option worked very well. A few years ago, a friend of mine worked in an office overlooking the parade route. I was given a solution that was better than either other option. The office was large enough to accommodate 30 of us easily.  We watched the parade from the beginning, to the end.  The view overlooking Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, California was clear on that crisp and bright January 1st morning.  We had all kinds of fun things for the kids to do and all kinds of goodies to eat.  We didn’t have to elbow our way through the crowds of people who had been there all night, or fight to use one of those little green rooms when we needed to go into the restroom.  We had prearranged parking in a parking garage next to the office building we occupied.  We had three or four televisions set up so we could watch the instant replays of all the parade’s bands and floats.  All in all, this was not a bad way to have watched the Rose Bowl Parade that fine January morning.  This new option changed my thinking about the parade completely.

Sometime when I am trying to know myself better, and to thereby become a “better me” I encounter an issue inside myself that needs to be changed. One of those issues for me is negative thinking and negative self-talk. Negative thinking is pretty obvious – it is all the ‘life is horrible and everything is bad’ thinking I might have on any given bad day. Negative self-talk is where I say or think in a dialog to myself all the negative things that, really, only my worst enemy might say to me: “You are such a dummy!” when I have made a mistake. “I can’t learn this; I’ll never get it!” when I encounter a new challenge. The real problem is that I don’t mean to, but I find I come to believe much of this negative thought and dialog. It cuts me off from any type of creativity and cancels all hope.

Sometimes I have two minds about negative thoughts:  On one side I want to dig into the roots of my thinking and come to understand where the thoughts come from and why I have them.  On the other side, I want to bury these negative feelings, and hide them even from myself, as if I could get rid of them that way.

So one day I might be consumed with questions:  Where do these thoughts come from and what should I do with them?  I have spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out why I felt so negative about some things…  What does it mean? What does it mean about me?  Why do I feel this way?  There seem to be an endless number of questions that I could ask myself about my own negative thoughts or about the negative way I feel about myself and about other people.  I can dig into and try to discover the causes, hurts and rejections or disappointments that have given me these negative thoughts and feelings.  In the end what I have discovered living on the “why” side is that I am paralyzed by asking these questions and trying to dig through and find causes.  Most of the time finding the cause didn’t change the negative feelings, or negative self talk. 

While I do not want to spend all my time digging into why I have negative thoughts, neither do I want to merely compartmentalize, and lock away the feelings and act as if they’re not there. The only other option when I want to stop digging for answers about all the questions is to just get rid of the negativity by burying it all. So on the other side, I stuff all those emotions deep inside, plaster on a smile and hope the thoughts and self-talk will simply decay down in the dark where I box them deep inside of me. You guessed it! This doesn’t work either. Sooner or later, all that stuffed emotion comes erupting out like dark lava on me, and unfortunately on those people in my life that I love.  

I have spent far too long having two minds about this negativity…and neither options has worked.

Being of two minds about something isn’t always a good thing, in fact it is called being “double minded’. There is a completely different path to take: I can retrain my thinking so I have different thoughts. Great you say, just how does one do that?  It’s not as complicated as it sounds, however it can be hard work.  If you’re used to thinking of yourself in a particular way and acting in a particular way even if it is self destructive, I find that the old habits will keep you stuck. You can neither understand them enough nor bury them deeply enough to bring real change. That is what we all want ~ real and lasting change. As I share my thoughts about negative thinking, and how to retrain those thinking habits I hope that some of you that read this, and change the habits that are negative and that hold back your personal creativity.

The solution is neither instant nor easy. In a nutshell getting rid of your negativity requires you to keep a log for between 22 to 30 days. The log should be divided into different columns. One column would be titled: My Negative Thought. Another would be: How I Feel. A third column is The New Thoughts. As you become aware that you are entertaining negative thoughts or self-talk, you record the thoughts and your emotions, Then you consciously rework the thought, making it new in the third column. This third column is where the real work is done; this is where you effect change. In this column you transform the negative thought into positive thought. Here is a simple example: 

Negative Thought: I can’t learn this.

How I Feel: I feel frustrated, angry and stupid.

The New Thought: I can learn this new process. I am not stupid. I have learned harder things than this. I can do it.

If this process is followed, negative thought is not merely understood, nor is it buried … the negative thinking changes. You are creating a new habit of thinking in a positive manner. For it to become habit, you must do the work. What you will end up with is a new mind. By turning the negative thoughts into challenges, deep in our mind, we are recognizing them as opportunities not as problems.  I have recently been studying about people’s preferences in thinking and in their behaviors (that is whether they are right brain oriented or left brain oriented; whether they are introverted or extroverted and so on.) I found through my studies both on the Internet and through a course I took that it is possible to retrain your thinking. This course of action really does work. Of course you have many thoughts and perhaps years of habitual negative thinking. You will have to do this again and again for a while, but soon…sooner than you expect, you will be positive, not negative.

 I look forward to hearing from those of you who take this challenge and began to change your negativity.  If you would like more information, please contact me through the blog.