How I Rewired My Mind from Negative to Positive

I rewired my thought patterns a couple of years ago, and boy am I grateful!

I had recently learned that we have an average of 6000 thoughts a day, and I thought, geez, how many of those are negative thoughts…

And then I learned that our thoughts are like a muscle, a muscle that grows depending on how much you work it. So, if you want your thousands of thoughts to work for you, you’ve got to put in the work!

I told myself that for every negative piece of self-talk that I say to myself, counter it with 3 compliments to myself. I figured that it was a good balance, and would help outweigh the judgmental thought. It worked! By the time I had come up with 3 nice things to say about myself, the 1 negative thought was a distant memory.

I focused on how I spoke to myself and watched what thoughts came to mind. I would hear a little voice saying “You have no sense of fashion,” and instead of countering that negative thought and trying to stick up to myself (because I’m quite hard to argue with), I would just couple the negative thought with friendly neighbours. I wanted to flood my mind with positive affirmations!

Thought #1: I am so stupid

Thought #2: Girl, I like your hair today

Thought #3: You had a very interesting conversation with Paul yesterday

Thought #4: You were so helpful in that meeting this morning

Just let the good naturally outweigh the bad.

By doing this, I found that I was retraining my mind on how to think and feel about myself. We can get stuck in such patterns, that our brain just gets into a rut of thinking the same negative thoughts over and over again until we begin believing them.

But hey, they are your truths to control, so take control! And re-write the script that you say to yourself 6000 times a day.

Once you are able to practice self-love for yourself, it’s much easier to genuinely connect with others because you’re able to get out of yourself and focus on the good in others.

Want to take a deep dive and learn more about rewiring your brain?

It’s got to do with neuroplasticity; read more about it here, and check out this neat article on Cognitive Restructuring through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy if this has motivated you to dive deeper!

[Originally posted Dec 26, 2020]