Are You Feeding Negative Thoughts Without Realizing It?
Are you feeding negative thoughts without realizing it? Well, they could become your worst enemy. They’ll block your personal growth and make discomfort your everyday companion.
Your internal dialogue about yourself, the world, and other people is more important than you think. In some ways, it determines your day-to-day life, your outlook on life, and influences how you feel. Therefore, identifying what kind of negative thoughts you feed is important.
However, achieving this is difficult sometimes, because maybe you’ve become used to cultivating a particular type of thought and you do it automatically, unconsciously. Most of the time, you don’t even realize what you’re saying to yourself.
That’s why the list of negative thoughts that we’ve compiled below may help you. You may find that you’re feeding some of them, all of them, or none of them. Whatever the case, they’re sure to help you reflect on the subject, and they’ll help you understand yourself and others. Are you ready?
“Your mind always reminds you of the bad, the difficult, the negative. Remind her of your greatness, your immensity, your passion and your strength.”
-Jorge Alvarez Camacho-
Feeding negative thoughts
1. “I’m not good enough”
One of the most common manifestations of insecurity is thinking you just don’t measure up. Do you think that you’re not good enough or that you’re not capable of doing things?
In today’s society, increasingly more people are considering themselves inferior to those around them, and even think that they’re incapable of achieving what they set out to do. However, this undervaluation is the result of a negative chain of thoughts.
But why do you think you aren’t good enough? According to some experts, the information-hungry society we live in has a lot to do with it. These days, we’re constantly connected and wanting to know at all times what everyone’s doing and what’s happening in every part of the world.
Every moment of every day, we can easily find out where people are traveling, what they’re eating, what goals they’ve achieved, and how happy they seem to be in all their posts.
The problem is that all this information (usually completely biased and not very representative) can easily influence you and increase the likelihood that you’ll compare yourself to them, whether they be friends, influencers, or successful people in our society. But why do you compare yourself to others?
In general, comparing is a pretty pointless practice, as each person has their own story, their own past, and their own way of living their life.
Comparisons aren’t usually on equal terms, but people ignore this fact because they’re often blinded by their results, most of which leave them lagging way behind.
“You must do the things you think you can’t do.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
2. “I’m just unlucky”
Another very common negative thought is telling yourself that you’re always unlucky.
Some people think that this is the complete opposite of the previous one. By thinking that you’re not good enough, you probably see yourself as inferior and less valuable. However, if you blame your problems on plain bad luck, then you’re actually thinking that you’re rather special compared to others.
Think about it. If you really believe that things “don’t work out” for you because you’re unlucky, then aren’t you seeing yourself as somewhat different from everyone else? However, more often than not, being lucky or unlucky is usually irrelevant as far as achieving success is concerned.
This may not be the case for you, but, more often than not, the belief that you’re unlucky is nothing more than an excuse that offers you a quick and convenient explanation for your problems.
Thinking this way means that you don’t take responsibility for what happens in your life. For this reason, it’s far better to forget about luck and focus on what you can control in order to achieve what you want.
3. “Everything always goes wrong”
The last thought we want to look at is the way you look to the future. Many people tend to think that everything will always go wrong. The problem here is that, when this thought starts to take root, then fear will soon rear in its ugly head. As a result of this fear, you’ll often avoid doing what you really want to do because you feel insecure and don’t trust your own abilities.
Maybe you’ve been thinking about quitting your job and branching out on your own for a while now. Maybe you want to embark on a dream trip to a tropical country. Or maybe you’ve even been thinking about asking your crush out on a date for ages. However, the fear of what might (or might not) happen is stopping you from doing it.
The fact of the matter is that, more often than not, the consequences aren’t usually as dire as you may think. If you think about it, the apocalyptic scenarios you sometimes worry about are actually very unlikely to happen. It’s just that your (internal) storytelling abilities are a bit too convincing sometimes.
In general, when things don’t go as you expected, then the worst thing that can happen is that you’ll feel bad for a while. Then, you’ll most likely just try again.
What should you do to avoid feeding negative thoughts? You should simply act and make an effort to achieve what you want in order to prevent fear from paralyzing you. Think about what’s the most likely outcome if you try to follow your dreams. Most of the time, you’ll find that the benefits far outweigh the potential problems.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Calvete, E., & Connor-Smith, J. K. (2005). Automatic Thoughts and Psychological Symptoms: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of American and Spanish Students. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 29, 2, 201-217, available via: http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10608-005-3165-2.
- Kwon, S. M., & Oei, T. P. S. (1992). Differential causal roles of Dysfunctional Attitudes and Automatic Thoughts in depression. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 16, 3, 309- 328, available via: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/ BF01183284.
