I’ve been hearing it for so many years now that I had almost come to accept it as undisputed fact but actually I’m not so sure. Negative thoughts are bad and positive thoughts are good. Sounds obvious doesn’t it?
The thing is that some people are naturally positive and some are naturally negative. Does that mean that negative people are absolutely never successful? I don’t think so. I know some right miserable gits who are very successful and I’m sure you do too!
I think what’s important is what you do with those thoughts.
For example, say you have set yourself a new challenge, a big scary goal. For some people its perfectly normal to set about thinking of all the ways to make it happen. But some people can’t help but see all the obstacles. And often we are a mixture of both but the long list of negatives stops us taking action.
The thing is, it doesn’t really matter where you start, what matters is where you end up.
If you’re naturally a negative thinker then make a list of all the reasons why you can’t achieve something. Round up as many as you can think of and when you run out of reasons keep thinking about it till you have some more. Now you have a big long list, start looking at it critically and for each one ask yourself are they really true. Cross off all the ones that are not 100% true. For example you may have said “I can’t start a business because I don’t have enough money” – ask yourself is that really true? Have you really done your research thoroughly and do you know exactly how much money you would need?
Now look at all the ones that you are absolutely sure are true. For each of them ask yourself what solutions you can think of to get round them. Again, go back to your business idea – now you’ve done your research and you know for sure that you don’t have enough money – but you have quantified the size of the challenge. That’s a huge step towards solving it. Now brainstorm all the ways you could get the money, or think of ways you could start with less, or think of other ways round the problem. Do this with every obstacle you have listed and suddenly you have an action plan!
The thing is that all the reasons why we can’t do things are actually solutions disguised as problems. Its just the flip side of the same coin! If your natural way of thinking throws up problems instead of solutions, go with the flow, use them. Your negative thinking is just as much a useful tool as someone else’s positive thinking if you know how to use it.
Susan The Coach 