How to deal with negative thoughts

Do you get stuck in negative thought patterns? We often get stuck thinking and worrying about the future, a future that we can’t control. No matter how much you want to, you can’t control the future. 

Reflect on all the times you’ve tried to control something and the outcome turns out to be completely different to what you’d hoped for. From burning the dinner, to missing a train, to getting stuck in a lift. We wouldn’t choose these things, but they do happen. Frequently. 

Humans have a negative bias that evolved to keep us safe from harm so we do tend to think more negatively than positively. In mindful practice we aren’t actually looking to change our thoughts from negative to positive, instead we are looking to cultivate the incredible power of witnessing our thoughts. 

We can do this by imagining our thoughts as bubbles in a pot of boiling water, rising from the bottom, reaching the top and then disappearing. Thoughts are like the beating heart, or the breathing lungs, they just happen, automatically. But just like being obsessed with your heart beat or your breath when you obsess about thoughts it can be super unhelpful. 

So, instead try to ‘step-back’ from your thoughts, witness them like bubbles in the pot of water, rising, then disappearing…and then see if you can relax into awareness of what is happening in the present moment as a way to anchor you and bring you back from being stuck in a negative thought pattern.