7,500 Negative Thoughts – Is This Positive Thinking?

A number of years ago, when people were becoming aware of the positive impact of good nutrition, there was a phrase that became popular and it was – “you are what you eat”.

People became more and more aware of the fact that our bodies are replenished by what we eat, so that the better the food that we consumed the better off our bodies would be.

Not too long ago a similar phrase had caught our attention. That phrase addresses how our lives are formed by what we think and it is – “you are what you think”.

The most popular book on this topic was “The Secret”. From the book a movie was developed and a whole self help industry grew around the promotion of this simple idea.

The Law of Attraction, which is the foundation of “The Secret”, is based on this idea. To see how popular this idea has become, if you go to Amazon and type in Law of Attraction you will be shown over 3000 results for books, recordings and videos.

But after having been exposed to this avalanche of information, what do we really know and understand about the phrase “You are what you think”?

Well, let’s take a step back and look at what underlies this phrase and take a look at the words that make up our thoughts.

Here is a startling statistic. According to research reported by Dr. Dennis Gersten , a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, the average person has approximately 15,000 thoughts per day. Which works out to around 10 different thoughts per minute, every minute, 24 hours per day. Now if that number were not surprising enough, Dr. Gersten also reports that only about 50% of these thoughts are positive. This means that we have on average 7,500 negative thoughts per day. See the full article at http://www.imagerynet.com/amino/audio/amino.audio.txt.html .

If the Law of Attraction is true and if everything produced about The Secret is true, then what we are doing is sabotaging the building of the life that we say we want.

We are conditioning ourselves with negative thoughts and building a negative world view.

This is not what we want to do!!

How to Develop Positive Thinking

According to the books on The Law of Attraction, there are a number of ways to develop positive thinking, create a positive world view and therefore a positive world experience.

But I propose starting with a technique that I believe is not discussed very often. And that is to start eliminating the negative thoughts.

Just imagine what it would be like to cut out 7,500 negative thoughts each and every day. That would be like taking off a 100 pound vest so that you could more easily run a marathon race.

The main objection that I get from clients to positive thinking is that it is hard to believe in it. It is hard to believe that hard times will change or that relationships, health or finances will improve just by thinking positively. So they fall back into the familiar pattern of thinking negatively about their lives.

The first step in eliminating negative thoughts is to become aware of their existence. This requires simply watching your thoughts as they fly through your head.

I wrote about this process in an article on Mindful Meditation. The following is the opening paragraph from that article:

Mindfulness meditation is a form of meditating in which distracting thoughts and feelings are not ignored but acknowledged and observed without passing judgment. The purpose is to detach from them and gain insight and awareness. This meditation method has been practiced for approximately 2500 years.

It definitely takes practice to be able to watch your thoughts. And the main part of the practice is just remembering to do it. But that improves with practice and time.

The next step in this process is to immediately stop thinking when you observe negative thoughts. Now this does not mean to change the thoughts into positive one, but simply to stop thinking the negative thoughts.

This may mean changing the subject you are thinking about or think about the subject as if it were happening to someone else. So that you have more objective thoughts.

Now what you have done with this procedure is eliminate the tremendous weight of negative thoughts. You have not challenged any beliefs about life or made any other changes. You have simply given yourself some breathing room by stopping negative thoughts.

As you practice this procedure you may like to listen to a meditation I have online about Removing Negative Thoughts which will let your positive thoughts grow.

Feel free to contact me with any questions that you may have or if you would like to discuss Energy Healing sessions to help in the process.