How to Deal with Negative Thoughts?

One of the questions that is frequently asked during my training and coaching programs, is this…

“How do I deal with negative thoughts?”
Before addressing this question, we need to understand, “What do we mean, when we say negative thoughts?”
Negative thoughts are thoughts that create uncomfortable emotions like Fear, Anxiety, Worry, Guilt, Jealousy, and the myriad of other combinations of these emotions… Fear could be triggering worry and jealousy could be triggering guilt and so on and so forth.
We also need to understand some basic things about the brain and mind.
I feel Human Brain is one of the most complex creations in the entire universe!!!
It is mainly programmed for two things.
One is for learning…
The other is looking out for danger…
When you need to cross a busy road with high traffic, your brain wakes up to the possibilities of any danger… And that is a useful thing… right… Being completely positive, without taking into consideration the risks, could be dangerous… right?
Yes, these so-called negative thoughts do serve us, at a very important level…
But at times, we can feel that this “looking for danger” is getting too much frequent, loud and sometimes out of control… And this could create problems for us. We need to have reasonable control over the negative thoughts and for that we need to understand them.
We need to understand, that the more we fight these, the stronger they become… The more we try to resist them we give them power. So, one thing we can do is, ignore them. How do we do that…. By, being ok with them and at some level accepting them as a part of living… I came to know about a formula, which can help us… The formula is called as RAVIJ formula, which is an acronym in this context.
Do not RAVIJ, is the message here: Do not RAVIJ the negative thoughts…
Do not
R – Resist the negative thoughts
A – Analyze the negative thoughts
V – Visualize the negative thoughts
I – Identify with the negative thoughts
J – Judge the negative thoughts
Just like the clouds passing in the sky, let those thoughts come and let them go… Let us choose to focus on the Sky beyond…
Ok… Using RAVIJ , I can deal with negative thoughts, then what you may ask… Yes, you have got it right… we need to go to the next level… We have cleared some space now… we need to fill it up…. with what, you may ask?
Imagine an elephant with his Mahout, walking on a street, with small shops on both sides… The elephant, being curious, stretches its trunk and grabs hold of anything and everything hanging in front of the shops nearby… the shop owners shout out, asking the mahout to do something about it…
The Mahout has a bamboo stick with him. He removes an object which the elephant has picked up from the latest shop and instead gives the bamboo stick to the elephant…
Now the elephant has something to engage with and holds to the bamboo stick, steadfastly and forgets about all the objects hanging in front of the shops…
Similarly, if we can hold on to something that is positive, in the sky space that we have chosen to focus, we can Identify our deep driving goals, and just like the elephant, we can choose to focus and hold onto them, leaving lesser space for those negative thoughts to float by…
And you could ask me, what this Elephant represent? Being mighty and strong, it would represent the Mind I say…
And before you ask another question, I ask myself, what would that Mahout represent… and I answer to myself, “that would be the Awareness “…

Ramasubramanian Ganapathy
NLP Trainer
Life and Business Coach
www.ramsnlp.com