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Trying to be more positive

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ftfipps

Well-Known Member
Earlier I was cleaning my house and I noticed I was getting agitated a bit. I didn't know why at first. Then I became conscious of what I was actually thinking about without noticing it. I was thinking about past NEGATIVE CRAP! I have an amazing author type memory and I dwell on past events and exchanges of words even though they are ridiculous and I need to let them go. Like, constantly I think about my awful cheating ex girlfriends! People who I used to be friends with that screwed me over or I just stopped talking to for whatever reason. As I did more housework I drifted from negative thoughts to more constructive thoughts. Planning for the future, etc. I guess I should just try to stay occupied with important stuff.

I am done with negativity PERIOD. I try to laugh and watch funny stuff a lot and when I start to get depressed from an autonomic response, I immediately try to counteract the effect by keeping a funny thought in the back of my mind.
 
That's an excellent strategy! I do something similar when I get on such trains of thought. Nothing stops a PTSD day-mare (as I often call flashbacks to bad stuff) like a funny thought. Sometimes, if I can't conjure a funny thought, I'll just force myself to be positive in one way or another and my mood will align with my thoughts after a little while.

That's good you're able to recognize your negative thoughts and change them. You say you're trying to be more positive, well I'd tell you to expect good results because you're doing it exactly right :) I'm happy for you!
 
Oh boy, I am so like this and have to force myself to be more positive, otherwise, it will bode very bad for me.

The curse of having a long memory in this regard.
 
All brains are designed for us to remember hurtful things so we can avoid them. It does make sense that we just do brain things better than the average :)
 
When we "catch" those negative thoughts... I think its a spark of genius. I'm not kidding. Because once we "notice" what we are dwelling on old bad stuff... That is when we are in full control.

For years I was in a negative loop that spiraled all the way down to not wanting to live... Living through that made notice that I want to live more than anything else.

So, yes the negative thoughts are hurtful and awful, but when we notice they are hurting our mindset, and disrupting our lives... We become powerful and then we become complacent again and they sneak back in... Its a circle but we try to make it smaller and smaller until its just a dot that disappears.

Over time IF we catch them, and change them, we change the balance of negative and positive in our heads which equals the negative and positive we experience in real life...

Then I (we) can become like Gritches who is always happy... : )
 
I often get 'accused' of being too negative, but then I tell them, I'm not negative but realistic. If I'm going to be optimistic, I need a genuine reason to be. There seems to be this thing in society that you are supposed to always be happy and cheerful or optimistic, you're not supposed to complain, but life for me is not like that.
 
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