Controlling negative thoughts and stress

This spring is such an important time for change in your life, like controlling negative thoughts (or changing something else) and thus managing your stress levels. Spring seems to be a natural time to make changes in our lives in line with nature with new seeds starting to sprout; flowers starting to blossom and bloom, and more days where the sun is beginning to warm the earth again.  What has been resting, sleeping and maybe dreaming starts to breathe life again with new energy.  

Being cooped up for the longest time even before last winter, you may notice the sun now beckoning you to spend more time outside, whether physically or just in your mind’s eye; with visions of creating, planting, seeding, connecting, and just tapping into the natural order of nature, to cleanse, renew and regenerate.  

After so long being dormant you may have processed that there are things you really would like to change in your life, with more time to think, to be, to experience, to reflect, to imagine! 

So, if you have thoughts about spring cleaning your garden this spring, or your window boxes, your planting boxes, why not also do some spring cleaning in your mind? When you decide to make any kind of change, whether to eat healthier, work out more, become more successful or improve your self-esteem, you need to be consistent with your thoughts, habits and your routine.  

It takes approximately 21-days to create a new habit in the subconscious mind. So, ask yourself, what changes can I make in my life that will provide me with a better way of living? 

Your mind is a very powerful tool. It just required you to tap into this power so that you being to bring about the changes you desire.  

How to identify what you want to change

To help you process what it is you may want to change, the following task may be helpful:

1. Like an artist, I like to start with a blank canvas and sketch a current situation on that canvas. Then start to add colour where the colours can represent feelings, thoughts and concerns. It’s the here and the now! 

2. As the drawing grows allow all your senses to connect; what you see, feel, hear, smell and even taste, depending upon how your drawing/painting/crayoning develops. Make it as real as you can!  

3. Once you have completed this stage, you have started to visualise and connect to where you are right now making it easier to visualise where you want to be or go from here. And just maybe you can take another sheet of paper and draw/paint/crayon where you want to be. Make it Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-scaled. Make it SMART.

4. Once you have completed this, compare your creations. See the difference between where you are now and where you want to be. In your picture story that is now coming together, write down the short-term stepping stones – or this can be another picture if you wish.

Negative behaviours are usually influenced by negative feelings, and negative feelings are usually influenced by negative thoughts… 

Releasing negative thoughts fast

A leaf starts with a seed, a behaviour starts with a thought!

Use your mind’s eye to see your leaves travelling down a stream, they endlessly drift and float by. Some leaves are green, the green ones are the fresh good thoughts, others are brown like old thoughts from the past that no longer are required.

Positive and negative thoughts, we all have them, we can allow them to germinate like seeds, or we can just let them go, the more you think about them, the more ingrained they become.

Visualise bike trails in a park or a woodland footpath that is used daily. The tyre tread patterns become ingrained within the earth with much use as more bikes travel along the path. Imagine yourself in your mind’s eye on a bike travelling along that path – it’s easy as it’s been travelled so many times but if you were to veer off and take a different path in the roughage, then you would probably find it more difficult at first but then repeated journeys would eventually lead to a new path. This is a lot like our thinking.

Our thoughts become repetitive the more we act upon them. All thoughts can be positive or negative.

A flexible therapeutic approach can help give you the tools to work your way through that new fresh path. If there is something you want to change, the above can be applied.