There are two ways we can choose to live our lives: with gratitude or with negativity. When you let negativity rule your life, you lose opportunities, relationships, and many other things. It impacts your life greatly. In this article, we’ll discuss the idea of grateful thinking verses that of negative thinking.
Are You a Victim of Negative Thinking?
Negative thinking is like a poison; it sneaks in unnoticed and slowly ruins your life. Many people have no clue that this poison has rooted its way into their lives, taken a firm hold, and disrupting everything in their lives. Here are some common signs that you’re a victim of negative thinking:
● You view the world as a glass being half-empty
● You always jump to the worst possible outcome
● You panic at every small change
● You’re getting less sleep or struggling to fall asleep
● You find yourself being testy at all times and easily angered
How Do I Make the Shift to Grateful Thinking?
If negative thinking has started plaguing your life, what can you possibly do to shift to grateful thinking? Below, we’ve listed a few exercises that can help you change to a more grateful way of thinking.
Focus on What You Have to Be Grateful For
Make a regular practice of noticing what you have to be grateful for and feeling and expressing that gratitude. The more you practice this the easier it’ll become. Before you know it, you’ll be thinking gratefully all the time without even thinking about it; it’ll be second nature to you.
Be Sure to Express Gratitude for Even the Smallest Things
The more you practice expressing your gratitude, the easier it will become. Start by expressing your gratitude for each and every little thing for which you could be grateful. This will help the habit become engrained in you, causing grateful thinking to become second nature to you.
Squash Your Negative Thoughts
All of this effort is for naught if you don’t work on getting that negativity out of your head. You have to work hard to squelch these thoughts and curb these behaviors. Train your brain to notice these negative behaviors instantly and practice avoiding them. Start by apologizing when you’ve caught yourself. Before you know it, you’ll avoid these behaviors.
Why Should You Bother?
There are many benefits to making this change in your life. First, it’ll ease your mind and help you get more restful and healthy sleep. It will also help to improve the quality of your relationships. After all, you wouldn’t want to hang around an overly negative person. Plus, everyone likes to feel appreciated, so the grateful attitude you’ve adopted will help you keep your old friends and attract new ones.
As we said above, negative thoughts are like a poison that slowly ruins your life. People don’t enjoy being around those who let negativity control their life. Taking this step to replace negative thinking with grateful thinking is an important step to improve yourself. The health benefits alone should give you plenty of reason to make this change.
Negative thoughts have a way of controlling our lives. They weasel their way in, take root, and affect everything you do and every decision you make. The only way to combat this is to replace your negative thinking with grateful thinking. This takes diligent effort, focus, and commitment. You can’t start this process, give up halfway through, and expect to reap the same benefits.
We hope that this article has encouraged and inspired you to take on this challenge and work to improve yourself. The journey ahead is arduous but well worth it. Keep at it and don’t give up.