Why positive thinking doesn’t work

Has anyone ever told you to ‘think positive’?.
Frustrating isn’t it!
Thinking positive is all very well and good when you feel good.  But when you feel worried and anxious or feel like your back is up against the wall, thinking positive can be an impossible task.

Why? Because the mind and the body aren’t working together as one.

When your head is thinking ‘come on you can do this’ but your body is saying ‘I can’t do this, now get me out of here’ then all the positive thinking in the world isn’t going to make a difference when your body is in conflict with your head.

I meet a lot of people who think negatively and have done for years.
Don’t get me wrong, there will be times in your life when you do think negatively, and that’s normal! I am sure that even the odd rouge negative thought slipped into Ghandis mind on occasion.

But when you spend most of your day, particularly over months and years, thinking negative thoughts, you have unwittingly conditioned your body to feel the emotion associated with that thought.

This is because emotions are simply chemicals and as you repeatedly think certain negative thoughts, you release the same chemicals.  This then get’s locked into a cycle.

This is a FANTASTIC short video with Dr. Joe Dispenza which explains at a neurological level, how this occurs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AE2j43LcR4

Trying to think positive is simply trying to think your way out of what you are feeling on the inside.  When the mind and body are in opposition, things won’t change.

What can you do to transform how you feel?

Step 1: Become aware of your thoughts in the first place.
Science tells us we have about 90,000 thoughts a day and the vast majority are exactly the same as you had the day before that and the day before that.  With a little awareness and monitoring, you will see that in certain situations, you think certain thoughts and this awareness alone is powerful in helping you to interrupt the patterns of thought you have going on.

Step 2:  Keep a journal
Keeping a regular journal is a brilliant way of getting out onto paper what’s going on in your head. It helps to calm down the mind, stop the mind from ruminating as much, and takes pressure off the dreaming brain. It is also a fantastic way to consciously start to become more aware of how you emotionally react to situations and the thoughts and behaviours that go hand in hand with that.

Step 3: Start tapping!
In order to think more positive, you have to change the way you feel.  Black and white thinking is locked in by high emotion.  The simplest and easiest way to change how you feel is through tapping, or EFT as it’s formerly known.
EFT allows you to tap on the acupressure points of your body that link up to the limbic brain, your emotional brain.  This helps to calm down the emotions you are experiencing and saying out loud what you are feeling at the same time helps to reframe what’s going through your head.

The result?  You can think positively!

Learn how to use EFT on yourself here in this introduction to EFT video or book your personal session today.

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Sara Maude

Sara Maude is an Edinburgh Hypnotherapist, Solution-Focused Psychotherapist, EFT Practitioner, Transformational Coach and International Wellbeing Trainer providing in-person and online sessions. Sara provides problem-free therapy which goes deep into the heart of the unconscious mind to create powerful lasting change.