Utilizing the Power of Negative Thinking

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Negative thinking is an important part of your existence.

The more I see people fall into the trap of trying to force themselves to be nothing but positive 100% of the time, the more I see them struggle in their lives.

And it’s absolutely true that focusing on the positive in your life will help you to feel more peace, to be more loving, to have more happiness.

There is POWER in the negative.

The negative is what creates growth.

The negative is where your dreams are born.

The negative is where you expand and become more.

Because it’s in the contrast and pain of the negative things in our lives that we would like to change, that we find the power to yearn for something greater.

When we gloss over the negative and pretend it isn’t there one of two things happen.

1. You lose your drive.

If you find ways to “just be happy” with your lot in life… you don’t have much drive to take action and move toward change.

This attitude of acceptance also usually means the person has accepted that this is just how things are, that they have no power over their own world, that they are stuck.

So if you can genuinely just be positive about everything, you’ll find nothing in your life ever changes and you become a nice but boring person.

2. You fight internally.

Most people who force themselves to suppress their negative thinking don’t actually get rid of it. They simply push it down into their subconscious where it then manifests as feelings instead of thoughts.

These people tend to go through their day to day lives thinking positive thoughts, but feeling like crap.

They don’t understand what is going on inside, but they find they just don’t feel good about themselves or about anything they do.

This is because they KNOW they are lying to themselves.

Negative Thinking to Avoid

It’s true there is a lot of negative thinking that can get in your way. But if you understand how to shift and change it to powerful negative thinking… you can use it as creative energy.

1. Abandoning Your Power (Complaining)

There is just no excuse for complaining.  Unfortunately, this is the most common kind of negativity.

When you complain you are focused ONLY on the problem, and the problem is something completely outside of your control. You are allowing something to take over your thoughts, feelings, and experience with no possibility of growth or change.

To shift this ask this questions: Can I change this? If the answer is no, ask “How can I have a more powerful reaction to this”.

In many cases the power will come in shifting your focus to things you can control, like your reactions.

2. Negative Self-Beliefs

This is the most insidious type of negative thinking, but the most powerful if shifted in the right way.

When you hold negative self beliefs about yourself, you use them to interpret your world. They are a filter for everything coming into your brain.

So anything that happens in your world will go in and be twisted around to support the belief.

These are core beliefs about who you are and your abilities to affect your world.  If you find yourself constantly thinking negatively about yourself, I would HIGHLY recommend following along with The Scientific Happiness Project (our video series helping people change their unconscious filters so they can get happy NOW).

3. Negative Expectations

This usually manifests in worry.
Thinking about the future is the ONLY place where I would honestly say, there is no room for negativity.

If you find it impossible to think positively about your future you are better off NOT THINKING about it, than expecting the worst.

Focus on your present, focus on what you are grateful for, focus on the things that are amazing that are happen in your life RIGHT NOW. This will give you a sense of peace, calm, and everything being “right” with the world.

In time, shifting this focus will also shift your view of the future.

Powerful Negative Thinking

1. Creative Negative Thinking

This is negative thinking that is solution based.  This replaces complaining.

When you look at an issue or problem, be honest about it. What about the problem is bothering you, what is not fitting into how you would like this area of your life to be.

Instead of glossing over and pretending it doesn’t exist, you can use the details of the problem to create a more clear and precise image of what the solution or change might be.

Through understanding thoroughly what you don’t want, you become more clear on what you do want.

Allow yourself to dig in, but anytime you feel yourself lose the power of lose the belief that you can create change in this area… just jump to focusing on the picture of what it would look like if you were happy with it.

This kind of thinking leads to change, and creating new more powerful experiences.

2. Tough Love Negative Thinking (Integrity)

This one is hard because it’s easy to fall into negative self beliefs. But sometimes you have to be able to look at yourself and be unhappy with the picture.

This kind of thinking allows you to live with more integrity and be the person you want to be.

If you can master this, you will find you become a more powerful person and can affect more change in your life.

To maintain power as you look at yourself and become honest about what you see, make sure you are using specific examples instead of creating overarching beliefs.

We all have a little bit of every quality we don’t want in life and a little bit of every quality we do want.

When we label ourselves, we limit ourselves.

But if we can look at a specific situation and be unhappy with specific behaviour, it allows us to modify the behaviour instead of feeling trapped by a belief about ourselves.

For example, for years I thought I was just “always late”.  I would tell people that I was terrible at timekeeping, that I a bad planner, etc.

Recently I was about 15 minutes late for an appointment with the personal trainer, and I just got mad.

I was mad at myself for being late, I was mad that it shortened my workout, I was mad that this behaviour had gone on for so many years.

And in an instant I got rid of the belief that “I am a late person” and realized I could just be on time.

After that I found myself getting ready early, aiming to be places early so that if stuff came up I could still be ontime.

I just changed the behaviour because I was not happy with it.

And I felt SO GOOD about myself.

I didn’t gloss it over by just thinking postively about myself. I looked honestly, saw a behaviour I wasn’t proud of, realized it didn’t fit with my current view of myself as a powerful and integrous person.

And I changed.

I did this on a much larger scale when I realized that working outside the home made me MAD at myself. I was NOT ok with my children not having their mother at home.

I was not angry at myself or at my situation, but at the fact that my life didn’t look the way I knew it should look… and I used that negative energy to hold myself to a higher standard of power… and create my dream life.

Without negative thinking you will never know what you want to change. But the negative thinking needs to give you power.

Don’t use this as an excuse to let your brain run away with you.

Everytime you find yourself in a negative place ask yourself, is this something I can change, how can I modify what I’m doing to change this situation.

How can this make me more powerful?

If it can’t, focus on something else.

If it can, rejoice.

You’ve found an area where you can affect POWERFUL change because it’s something you care about!

To Your Honest, Integrous, and POWERFUL Future,

Niamh Arthur

P.S. The most powerful change I made in my life was when I decided I would have a Stay at Home Family.  We created this little blog and in a few short months were able to stay at home AND travel the world.

To discover how we did it, enter your details at the right of this page!