There can sometimes be a sort of arrogance about negative thinking. It’s often assumed that pessimism and negative thinking are ‘more real’; that it’s more realistic to think negatively rather than to expect the best. But this is to disregard the extent to which it has been established that we do create our own realities from our perceptions.
For example, one study of elderly people found that their perception of their own health was significantly more critical to their longevity than their actual physical health as ascertained independently by medical professionals (1).
Professor Robert Ornstein, author of the book in which that study appears, also shows that the immune systems of pessimists function less well than those of optimists, and that optimists have a better life expectancy than pessimists.
So we can conclude from this that negative thinking is bad for your health. No surprise there. But negative thinking will also make you bail out on a project at an earlier stage – which then also means that your negative predictions of failure are more likely to come true. So it’s easy to see why the negative thinker comes to believe in the validity of their negativity.
Being more positive makes you more popular – which makes you feel more positive
In his book Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman talks about the research he and his team did into the optimism levels of American Presidents. 27 out of 29 winners of the presidential race were graded as more optimistic than their unsuccessful running opponent. Negative thinkers repel rather than attract other people. We like people who make us feel good.
Negative thinking - an unfortunate habit
They say ‘who dares, wins’. But negative thinking stops people even trying. It’s not always our own fault that we think negatively. We can inadvertently learn to use a negative thinking style by being exposed to other negative thinkers. Their negative approach to life can ‘infect’ our own attitudes, making us more prone to depression and illnesses. So it’s important to ‘vaccinate’ ourselves against negative thinking.
This is not to say that negative thinking has no place in our lives. It’s clearly good, for example, to think negatively about your ability to drive after drinking too much alcohol. But when negative thinking and always expecting the worst becomes an overriding pattern, then something needs to be done about it.
We developed our Stop negative thinking download as a solution to having to think negatively. The feedback we have had about this session shows us that people find it works really well for them and provides realistic alternatives to negative thinking.
Negative thinking leads us to see unpleasant life events as permanent and global (affecting everything about us) rather than temporary and specific. If we are negative thinkers with low self-esteem, then we will also tend, quite unreasonably, to blame ourselves for the bad things that happen – we internalize bad events and blame them exclusively on ourselves.
Of course, it’s the opposite way round when it comes to good life events! Negative thinkers tend to think negatively even about positives. So they might see the fortunate circumstance as temporary and so not likely to last (‘too good to last!’) and specific to only a very small part of their lives.
We at hypnosisdownloads.com hope that this highly successeful Stop negative thinking download will continue to help everyone who uses it.
Stay positive and expect the best.
Mark
Note
(1) Professor Robert Ornstein: The Healing Brain: A Scientific Reader, 1993, Guildford Press.
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