Negative thoughts – Abraham Lincoln said “most folks are about as happy as they want to be”.
This implies when it comes to our happiness, it’s our choice that make a difference. We have anywhere 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day, yes and on a daily basis these are 80% – 90% of negative thoughts that’s insane and most often they are the same thoughtsthat we have thought the day before yesterday.
Our brain and mind both are hard wired to overestimate the threats and underestimate the resources and opportunities.
From ancient sciences to today’s modern scientists have come across a term known as negative bias.
What is negative bias?
Our brain is simply made to react more sensitively to nasty news. The studies done by John Cacioppo, Ph.D. university of Chicago showed pictures to various students.
- To arouse positive feelings they were shown Ferrari, pizza and flowers.
- To arouse negative feelings they were shown dead cat or any sad news.
- To produce neutral a plate and a hair dryer.
While carrying on with the experiment, brain’s activity was recorded in the form of electric signals in cerebral cortex.
The results were not so surprising as the brain reacted more towards negative, more strong stimuli it deems negative and a greater surge in electrical activity.
Our thoughts are more heavily influenced by the downbeat news rather than good news.
In the book “Hardwiring Happiness” by RickHanson he states that “Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones”.
If you are tired physically, it’s hard to think clearly same goes with your brain if you are constantly feeding these thoughts “can’t”, “never”, “should” then your brain produces the corresponding chemicals that weakens your physiology.
There are no worries if you can control how your brain thinks and I have some proven techniques for this.
- Cognitive model
While thriving for the traditional theories let us take a modern example your brain is just like a computer which is responsible for all cognitive decisions ( thoughts, emotions, decisions). Perception is like the input to the computer that then computes the input into feelings, actions and thoughts.
This means your body and brain both are on the same platform while body plays a much larger part in these cognitive processes. What your body actually feeds inside it will directly affect the cognitive process.
Let me illustrate some examples:
- People holding a warm cup of coffee instead of iced coffee, stranger are judged as more trustworthy and responsible.
- Leaning towards left makes you underestimate the magnitudes of things.
- Those who hold heavier clipboard judged currencies to be more valuable than those who hold light clipboards.
If you want to get deeper than read the full article here “How to throw away negative thoughts and feelings” by Seppo”.
This basically gives you an idea that if you feed positive thoughts in your head but can’t take care of your body then it’s of no use. Body and mind both are the different face of the same coin.
There are many experiments carried on getting rid of the feelings of negativity but here are the ones that are proven.
- If you write few positive points on a paper and contemplate it, do the same with negative points also then researchers have found if you trash the paper your body feels more positive and keeping the paper do matters.
Negative Thoughts – In a nutshell you can distract yourself, think about something that enlightens you not meditation or any yoga but the events, memories. This is where your happiness lies and positive thoughts bloomin your mind.
