Scroll through social media and you’ll see positivity mantras and a focus on mindset. But amongst all the noise, we can find ourselves feeling like failures because we hear negative self-talk every day. Our minds generate around 70,000 thoughts a day, and shockingly, 80% or more tend to be negative. When you really sit with that – it helps you make sense of it and understand that part of creating and maintaining our well-being is managing the prevalence of the negative thoughts our brain generates to help keep us safe and alive at all times!

Automatic Negative Thoughts trigger a cascade of chemicals in our bodies, affecting our mood and overall health. The power of our thoughts lies in their ability to shape our reality, regardless of their accuracy. Thoughts, if left unquestioned, can deceive us and lead to anxiety, depression, and relationship issues. However, by learning to identify and challenge these automatic negative thoughts, we can transform our mental landscape and cultivate a more positive outlook on life.

Managing negative thoughts is a skill that can be learned and practiced, leading to significant improvements in our mental and emotional well-being. Here are five simple steps to help you navigate and overcome automatic negative thoughts:

1. Write Down Your Automatic Negative Thoughts: Start by acknowledging and recording your negative thoughts. Bringing them out into the open is the first step towards challenging them.
2. Identify the Type of Automatic Negative Thought: Recognise common patterns such as:

• ‘All Or Nothing’ Thinking:Seeing things in extreme terms, such as believing that something must be perfect or a total failure.
• Labelling:Using negative names or terms to describe yourself or others, often oversimplifying complex situations.
• The Blame Game:Avoiding personal responsibility by attributing negative outcomes solely to external factors or other people’s actions.
• Thinking With Your Feelings:Allowing emotions to dictate your thoughts, leading to irrational beliefs based on current emotional states.
• Fortune-Telling:Predicting negative outcomes or events without evidence, assuming the worst-case scenario will always happen.
• Mind-Reading:Assuming you know others’ thoughts, intentions, or motivations, often attributing negative reasons to their behaviours without factual basis. Understanding these patterns can help you address and reframe them effectively.

3. Question the Truth of Your Thoughts: Challenge the validity of your negative thoughts by asking yourself if they are 100% true. Often, our minds exaggerate situations or distort reality, leading to unnecessary stress and anxiety.
4. Assess Your Emotional Response: Reflect on how your negative thoughts make you feel and then imagine how you would feel without them. This exercise can provide perspective on the impact of your thoughts on your emotions.
5. Make Negative Thought Management a Daily Habit: Consistency is key when it comes to managing negative thinking. Practice challenging and reframing your thoughts regularly to strengthen your cognitive resilience and promote a positive mindset.

While there is immense pressure on individuals, especially women, to excel in various aspects of life, embracing self-compassion is crucial for maintaining mental well-being and resilience. By defining our own version of success and integrating self-compassion and gratitude into our daily lives, we can shield ourselves from the harmful effects of constant comparison and perfectionism.

There are two questions I encourage you all to use to neutralise automatic negative thoughts:

1. Are my thoughts useful?
2. How do they behave?

By adopting a proactive approach to managing our thoughts and cultivating self-compassion, we can unlock a sense of inner peace, confidence, and emotional empowerment. Remember, your thoughts do not define you; they are simply visitors in your mind, and you have the power to choose the ones that serve your highest good.

Go gently

Mel xx