There is certain logic to the last frame of this cartoon. However, the advice should be to Shtop Thinking Negatively and Shtart Thinking Positively.
The more negative thoughts you have the more negative thoughts you will have. It is a self perpetuating process. Science has proven that negative thinking releases stress producing chemicals throughout your brain and body. When this happens, your access to higher brain thoughts shuts down. Your logic and reasoning ability is impaired and you are limited to three basic approaches – fight, flight or freeze.
In their book, Words Can Change Your Brain, Andrew Newberg, MD and Mark Robert Waldman reveal studies showing that just seeing a list of negative words for a few seconds can release those chemicals, making people feel worse.
They cite research that shows your brain has a neural bias for negativity. Your brain does not see positive thoughts as a threat to your survival so it doesn’t respond as strongly as it does to negative thoughts. To overcome this neural bias, you must repetitiously and consciously generate as many positive thoughts as you can. The research has shown that you need to generate at least 3 – 5 positive thoughts for every negative one.
And, here’s the thing – it doesn’t matter if the positive thoughts are irrational, they will still generate a higher level of positive energy. This makes sense since your negative thoughts are likely irrational as well.
At Clarity, we have experienced these positive thinking truths for almost 20 years. Our Shift Your Thoughts system was created to give us the ability to quickly shift our thoughts from negative words to positive words. (If interested, Go Here)
It all comes back to the importance of being self aware of where your thoughts are. Then you need a pre-planned strategy for shifting those thoughts to positive ones. Of course, it does require a deep commitment and desire to become a more positive person. If you have well developed grumpy tendencies, you must be dedicated to overcome the years of negative chemical drip you’ve created in your body. The more you practice shifting negative thinking to positive, the more you generate the positive chemicals to help you see the more positive side of life.
Here’s a mantra that may help – ten words to remind you of the importance of thinking and behaving positively.
- Think Positive Thoughts
- Shift Negative Thoughts
- Choose Above-the-Line
If you repeat this mantra often throughout your day, you will create the little reminder module in your brain to help you discover negativity rapidly. With that conscious discovery, you can then rapidly develop the positive thoughts to shift your energy. These positive thoughts will attract more, and so on…
Excitedly living on my body’s own positive chemicals,
Gary
