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How to handle the ceaseless flow of negative thoughts.

Most of us, are bombarded daily with negative thoughts, while we’re doing anything, there’s that constant low grade uncomfortable buzz of negative emotion. Even while resting many feel they can’t fully rest or wind down.

Ive personally dealt with this myself for about as long as I can remember. Im not going to claim I know how to stop negative thoughts. Because I don’t fully understand the workings of the mind and I believe thoughts seem to appear from thin air without our control. So it can be like grasping at smoke to try to control it.

But if we cannot really control the thoughts we’re having, or at least not the majority of our thoughts, what can we do? How do we get better and stop these negative cycles of thinking from draining us? How do we think positive, or even how do we simply quiet the mind for some much needed internal rest of the soul?

This is what i’ve learned so far…

First off, we don’t fight the mind, thats a futile battle unfortunately, the mind is paradoxical in the sense that if you try not to think about something, you will think about it more. What you resist will persist. What you suppress wants to be released somehow. Pressure builds up and the mind is the messenger expressing it.

So instead of fighting thoughts, which is a losing battle and counterproductive, we observe. We watch the mind, but internally we take a step back from our thoughts. We don’t give the as much weight as before because we don’t take every thought to be truth.

We don’t immediately react and resist every negative emotion, feeling, thought. We are aware of them, we feel their presence, but we don’t cling and we don’t resist. We stay present in the here and now. We let them pass by like clouds.

Don’t identify with the mind, you don’t have to believe each thought. If negative emotion comes up, try to feel it fully and let it pass. Finally for today, if you catch your mind dwelling on the past that you can’t change, or fearing a future that isn’t here yet, breathe. Be conscious of your inner state, realize you got hypnotized by the fear again and return to the present moment.

Life is in the here and now, the past and future are useful concepts we use to organize life, but we can’t live in the past, can’t change it, and we can’t fully control the future, were bound to the eternal present moment.