Are you caught in a bad cycle of thoughts? Here’s how to stop negative thinking so you can experience more joy and better health in your life.

Do you have a loop of negative thoughts on repeat in your head?

When something goes wrong, do you automatically think, well of course that didn’t work out. It never does.

If negative thinking dominates your brain, you’re not entirely to blame.

We’re all susceptible to a negativity bias where we give more weight to the negative than the positive.

Sadly, we’re hardwired to focus more on negative situations.

We can blame this on our hunter-gatherer ancestors. They had to be on high alert to watch for danger in order to stay alive. The ones that managed to stay alive did so by focusing on life-threatening situations. These traits have been passed on to future generations and this is the reason why many of us now have a negativity bias.

Luckily, we don’t have the same life or death threats to watch for when heading to Whole Foods, but unfortunately, many of us still ruminate more on negative experiences than positive ones.

Studies have shown that negative situations leave a bigger mark than positive ones. The brain is wired to spend more time focusing on bad experiences over good ones.

In a study done out of Ohio State University, brain waves were measured in people who were shown negative, neutral, and positive images. The brain showed a stronger reaction to negative pictures than to any others.

Research shows that we use and learn from negative information much more than we do from positive.

Ever had an end-of-year review where you received good marks and feedback but there were just a few areas of improvement your boss discussed with you? I’m going to guess that all you focused on afterward was what you did wrong and needed to fix, instead of all the things you did well.

Relationship expert Dr. John Gottman found that couples needed to have five positive experiences to offset just one negative one. That means you could do four nice things for your partner and make one mistake and the one mistake would be all that they could think about.

That’s the power of the mind, or at least the untrained mind.

Effects of Negative Thinking

Having a negativity bias like this can not only strain your personal relationships but it can also impact your work, health, and overall wellbeing.

Constant negative thinking can lead to:

Elevated cortisol levels from increased stress and anxiety
Difficulty sleeping
Weight gain from mindless eating and overeating
Headache, fatigue, body pains
Depression
Low self-worth
Poor outlook on life

How to Overcome Negative Thinking

1. Notice Your Thoughts

Start paying attention to the thinking that’s going on in your head. Notice the tone. Notice the repetition.

When you hear something negative, and you will definitely hear something negative, just notice. Don’t beat yourself up or reprimand yourself. Just witness.

Noticing your thoughts is the first step. You can’t change something you can’t see. So recognize that you might be talking to yourself in a not-so-helpful way.

2. Reframe Your Thoughts

Once you realize you’re carrying around a negative thought or three, then it’s time to gently let go. You can try and do this in a few different ways.

Put a name to the voice behind the negative words. Perhaps that’s Negative Nelly. When you notice the unpleasant thought, just tell Nelly, no thank you. You appreciate her trying to protect you but this talk isn’t helpful to the situation at hand and you’re not engaging.

After identifying the negative thoughts, try asking yourself some questions.

Is this thought really true?
Can I see it from another perspective?
How is it not true?
Is there a pattern to when this or similar thoughts arise?
What are my triggers?
What am I getting out of thinking this thought?
What are some alternate thoughts I could try?
What is this negative thinking trying to protect me from?
How would I respond to a friend with this same thought?

Take time to process your thoughts. There’s likely a core wound underneath it all that needs some nurturing.

Once you can look at the negative thought more objectively, you can process it with less emotion, and then move on to more positive thinking.

3. Practice Gratitude

Once you get into a rhythm of noticing your negative thoughts and reframing them, you then need to practice new thoughts.

You need to start creating new neural pathways in the brain that support the life you want to live.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you don’t want to spend your time beating yourself up for something you said 10 years ago or a mistake you made as a child.

Presumably, the life you want to live is full of appreciation and love for the people and events around you. If that’s the life you want to live, you need to think thoughts that support that life.

Make a point to see what’s working well in your life. Have gratitude for things big and small.

Take time out of your day to thank the people who enrich and make your life better. That can include everyone from a loved one to the people who collect your trash.

The more you can find what’s going well, the more you will see, and the easier it’ll be to remove the negativity bias.

4. Practice and Repeat

Practice and repeat all of the above as often as necessary.

You may be harboring some childhood wounds that get triggered daily, so it’s going to take some time to rewrite the programs where you might tell yourself that you’re not good enough.

As soon as you notice the negative thought, stop, notice, name it, question it, process it and work towards releasing it. Find a positive thought to counterbalance it and continue to look for the good in your life.

The more you practice this more positive cycle of thinking the more it will start to become second nature to you.

Before long, you may even have a positivity bias in your life.