Five ways to overcome negative thinking

Have you ever felt trapped in your own mind? Did you ever feel like your self-doubt is holding you back?

A study shows that an astonishing 49 percent of entrepreneurs are suffering from at least one mental illness, such as ADD, ADHD, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety or addiction, and about one-third of them struggle with more than one mental illnesses. If everything depends on yourself, the responsibilities can overtake you. I want to introduce you to five steps that will eliminate negative thinking, while also providing a basis for the manifestation of an energetic, positive mindset.

Stop looking at the past

You messed up, things didn’t go like you planned and you feel haunted by back luck. It happened. Get over it. Being aware of your deficits is important, constantly thinking about them is not. There are two main reasons why you need to get over it. First of all, the past and the future are illusions. The only thing that actually exists is the present. You only have 24 hours each day, and you don’t know if you will be a part of the future. The only thing you know for certain is that as long as you are breathing, you are alive. You can only take action in the present. If you are only thinking about the past or worrying about what is coming, instead of taking action, there is no time left for you to design a better present for your future self. Taking action is the key to success. If you are constantly thinking about something that already happened or may happen in the future, you are not working on the steps that will lead to your success.

Focus

Just like your time, your energy is limited. Don’t waste your focus on things that don’t bring value to your life. Focus is nothing more than a strong concentration of mental energy. If you are using your mental energy for negativity, you are wasting energy that you could have used for constructive, positive thoughts. There is no way for negativity to lead to success. Keep in mind that positive behavior results in positive outcomes. Although the law of attraction, introduced by Phineas Quimby in the early 19th century, can’t be considered as a proven scientific concept because of a lack of evidence, the double-slit experiment has proven that there is an unlimited amount of outcomes and that the final result is dependent on the observer. This conclusion strongly suggests that thoughts indeed have an impact on the outcome. Extremely successful people follow this principle in one way or the other, as, for example, Henry Ford concluded almost a century ago:“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.”

Everything is a wave, including your life

While professional traders use the Elliot-Wave-Principle to predict the market, the man who invented most of the technology we rely on today, Nikola Tesla, said: “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”Although you might be sick of all the generic, motivational advice, like “keep going!” or “never give up!”, this advice hasn’t worked so many times for so many people without a reason.Life consists of ups and downs, and when you get down to it misfortune really is nothing other than a disadvantageous event that had a really low probability of happening. But what does this mean if you are haunted by bad luck? Given that you’re not the origin of your problem, which you perceive as a misfortune, having bad luck for a longer period of time means that a lot of unlikely events happened in a row. This makes it highly likely that you will be lucky soon, due to the laws of probability. Think about it like this:Every investment can fluctuate in temporary value, completely independent of the real value of an asset. If you buy a worthless asset, it’s highly likely that the downtrend will last until the price goes to zero. That’s the case if you do mistakes over and over again without learning from it. That’s not bad luck then. Misfortune is not in your control. Just like the price of an asset with real value can get out of control, irrational price dumping can occur due to political or sociological reasons. But if you are holding a valuable asset and its price is going lower and lower, the worst thing you can do is to sell it at the bottom. That’s the case in your life as well.

Quitting

Quitting after having a bad time is like selling at the bottom. If you give up after a few rough weeks, you didn’t get the concept of probability. If you go to a roulette table at the casino and bet on black ten times, there is a 51 percent chance that you will lose on your first try. Assuming you lose ten times, it becomes more and more likely that the next result will be black since the chances for red are only 49 percent.

Reality is formed by energy

If and when you understand the concept of probability, you will soon come to the conclusion that the only thing you should focus on is giving your very best in the present. Thanks to Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, it is proven that every atom consists of quants, which, in concrete terms, means that everything is energy. Moreover, your thoughts are energy and this energy has an impact on the energy that creates your reality. With every invention, there was something that existed before it; The imagination that turned an idea into reality. Humans are able to form reality if they understand the power of their focus. R.C. Henry, a professor of Physics and Astronomy at John Hopkins University, explains things further, saying that a fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality.

As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote:

“The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual.”

The widespread misconception about gratitude

If you don’t learn to be happy, you never will be. Gratitude is one of the hardest concepts of humankind. Happiness comes from within — and many people learn this the hard way. Sure, you get a dopamine rush after achieving a goal, maybe you always wanted to be able to afford a Porsche and when it happens for the first time it’s great, but it’s human nature to get used to it.

That’s the moment when you ask yourself: “What’s next?”

There is nothing besides yourself that can make you sustainably happy. Widespread misconceptions about gratitude lead to false assumptions, so you think you will feel grateful after getting something that you wanted in life.Even if you earned it through hard work, you will never feel gratified by external things. Gratitude is a skill if you don’t learn to be grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be grateful for more?

Relativity

The reason behind this is simple and, once again, lies in the discoveries of Albert Einstein. Not only did he show us that everything is made up of energy, but he also introduced the concept of relativity. Moreover, relativity is accountable for your inability to be satisfied by things which can be measured in numbers. Money doesn’t make you happy, freedom does. There is always a better, a more, a worse and a less. If you think that you will be happy if you get this or that, you are just postponing your happiness to a later point in life, and this event might make you happy for a short period of time, but it won’t last. If you are reading this you are most likely having a better life than 815 million people, who are currently starving from undernourishment. Furthermore, over one billion people are currently living in slums. If you are not grateful by now, you are not acknowledging how lucky you already are.

Meditation is the art of doing nothing

Everybody talks about meditation and how it is essential for your success. Yet, no one tells you what it is all about. Meditation is the ability to do nothing, to not get distracted and to not react to things. Your goal is to get into a state of pure consciousness. When you focus on your breathing, you start to regain the ability to focus. However, it’s more than just focus.If you practice meditation daily, you can learn to visualize things in a super realistic way, you will be able to see, taste and feel every reality that you create in your mind. This can be used as a powerful tool to maintain a strong vision since you can visualize exactly what your reality should look like. The feeling of joy you will receive will be a strong motivator to keep on working.Furthermore, the art of doing nothing relieves you from the stress which you are exposed to on a daily basis. In fact, it is scientifically proven that Shaolin monks accomplish their superhuman powers due to excessive meditational practices, as Harvard researcher Herbert Benson concluded on the Harvard Gazette in 2002.

Being grateful for the bad things in life

You get lucky and you get unlucky — that’s just how life goes. If you accept this premise, you have two options:

You can either decide to just celebrate your successes and brood over your failures or you can celebrate your failures and your successes, making the worst case scenario in your life a party. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not talking about doing stupid things or making stupid mistakes on purpose. I am also not saying that you should be proud of your failures.

What I am saying is that you should give it your all. Give it your best, work hard and celebrate yourself for that, even if it doesn’t work out. Bad luck is temporary and you will be lucky again, that’s the law of nature. If you are constantly improving yourself and putting in the hard work, there is no way that you will remain unlucky forever.

Having said that, ultimately the journey has to be the goal. Sacrificing your time in the present for a potentially better future is not the solution. Don’t sacrifice your present for a better future, because time only moves forward and at some point, your time will be used up. Find a way to preserve your happy present in the future.

Five ways to overcome negative thinking was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.