Negative Thinking – the connection between what we think and what we feel

Negative thinking can dramatically change your mood and stop you accomplishing things you desire in your life and career. Allowing negative thinking to build into a habit means you can spend most of your time feeling low, sad and anxious and everything you are trying to achieve in life appears difficult and even impossible. Practising this negative thinking habit for long enough can eventually lead to feelings of helplessness and at its worst, depression. If you can learn to reframe these thoughts into positive ones, you can help yourself to lead a happier and more fulfilling life.

There is a strong connection between what we think and what we feel and negative thoughts can escalate into a downward spiral of ‘awfulness thinking.’ When this happens your energy is low and your thoughts can be irrational. However, if you can identify when you are thinking negatively and learn to turn your thoughts into positive ones, your energy is immediately lifted, you feel more motivated and believe that everything you want to achieve is possible.

Negative thinking and thinking errors

As a cognitive behavioural coach, I often come across clients who have been held back in their life, or career, in various ways due to their unhelpful beliefs and thought patterns. This negative thinking habit does not serve them well, as it causes barriers to what they can achieve in their life and careers. Using cognitive behavioural coaching tools and techniques, I introduce my clients to a list of ‘common thinking errors’ which can contribute to negative thinking. Running through this list with my clients is a source of amusement to them, as they immediately identify strongly with some of the thinking errors. It is also a powerful tool to help clients to catch themselves in the moment of negative thinking and, through coaching, learn to put in place coping strategies to ensure that they turn their negative thoughts into positive ones.

Each client I use this list with varies in terms of the thinking errors they identify with. Once the client has recognised the thinking errors unique to them, they find it very helpful to work with me during their coaching sessions, to start to look for exceptions to the rule and gather evidence that their negative thinking is not true.

Common thinking errors. Don’t believe everything you think

If you would like to find out more about thinking errors, you can find a variety of online resources which outline the common thinking errors list. Some examples of thinking errors are:

• All or nothing thinking – seeing events in absolute terms which does not allow for shades of grey, or any middle ground

• Magnification/minimisation – playing up the negative in a situation in your mind and playing down the positive

• Mind-reading – the ability to know the thoughts feelings and assumptions of other people without communicating with them to test out if your perception of what they are thinking is true

• Discounting the positive – you consistently dismiss any of your positive experiences, or qualities

• Emotional reasoning –you feel something strongly, so you believe it to be true and act accordingly.

Overcome the habit of a lifetime

By learning to think more positively, you will feel less stressed and live a calmer and healthier life. You will need to practice thinking positively every day. It won’t come easily to start with, since you may have built up a habit of thinking negatively over many years. In fact, it may take iron grit determination to overcome the habit of a lifetime. However, if it means you can soon forget the times when you lived your life thinking negatively, perhaps it will be worth the effort?

If you would like to learn more about how cognitive behavioural coaching can help you to identify your unique thinking errors which contribute to your negative thinking and start to practice a positive mindset, please don’t hesitate to contact me.