How to Cheat Negativity and Retrain Your Mind

Hint — you can’t just substitute positive thoughts

What is it you’re afraid of? Yes, that’s right, I said afraid.

Maybe you’re thinking it’s a block. It just sprang up out of nowhere. All your great ideas evaporated.

Or, maybe the ideas are still there, but you look at that damn blank page and what you wanted to say just drifts away. You reach for those words to present your ideas, and find nothing.

And now your productivity’s in the toilet.

Maybe you think your creativity has just taken a holiday. Deserted you when you desperately need to put together a great presentation.

C’mon, dammit. You have deadlines to meet. Meetings to take. Phone calls to return, emails to compose. You certainly can’t afford to be dithering like this — not with your tight schedule.

Has your well run dry?

Well, you have no time right now to rest and recharge. If that’s even the problem…

I believe what’s really happened is you’ve hit a choke point. You’ve been sailing along, being a rising star, meeting everyone’s expectations, crushing your goals, and suddenly, you choke.

Why now? The answer is simple — fear.

In your journey forward, your path to success, however you define it, you’ve crossed a line. A line somewhere deep in your subconscious which defines what you’re able to do and how far you’re able to go.

One of those self-limiting beliefs you may not even be aware of, or you might have completely forgotten about. Or thought you’d already grown past it.

But now, you’re way over that line, way out of your comfort zone.

And you choke.

It’s your brain’s way of saying “Whoa, slow down. Go back where you belong, where you’re comfortable.”

Fear can do crazy things to us, and make us do crazy things. Like a little kid hiding in a burning building because they’re too afraid to try and get out. It feels safer to hide from the flames.

But the flames come anyway. That’s just the nature of fire. But instead of facing the flames and trying to get through them, the scared little kid withdraws deeper into the building, under the bed, in a closet… anywhere they can’t see the flames and can fool themselves into thinking they’re safe.

So, one of the first things fire/rescue personnel are taught is to search under the beds and in the closets — anywhere a scared kid might be hiding.

Well, you get to be your own firefighter. You’re the kick-ass hero in the smoke-stained fire-proof suit with the cool helmet, carrying the freakin’ big axe, who scoops up your scared, little kid-self, and carries you to safety.

Sounds pretty awesome, right?

Well, it is, but you have some work to do.

Even if you think you don’t have time.

Because the more you put it off, the more you refuse to face the flames and hide under the bed, the more they will build up inside.

And, sadly, the more you let things build up, the tighter you screw down the lid so you can keep going, the bigger the blow-out will be when the pressure is finally too much to contain.

So, you have to do some digging. Figure out your trigger. Find the specific negative thoughts or old patterns of thinking which are holding you back.

Not, “Oh, I’m afraid of failing.” Yeah? or, “I’m afraid of success because people will expect more.” That’s just fear of failing in a different suit of clothes.

Fear of failing should be no surprise. We’re almost all afraid of failing at some point in our lives. It’s only human to be afraid of the unknown, or to wonder if we dare fly so high, lest our wings melt and we fall to earth like Icarus.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default. — J. K. Rowling

But, let’s take a closer look. Let’s find out what’s really going on.

Were you told you’re not good enough? Have you failed before and now you believe people are waiting for you to blow it again?

Is it your pattern to gain a little success but not be able sustain it? You just can’t figure out how. You always seem to lose traction or slip back down. So it’s become easier to accept down as your norm and stop trying.

Awesome. You’ve identified a trigger, a pattern. A limiting belief.

If you’re one of the lucky ones, you’re golden. You named your fear. You’ve seen it for what it is. You’ve broken it’s hold over you and you’re able to go through to the other side.

You’re good to go.

But if you’re someone who’s living with long-term damage or a lifetime of negativity and pressure to perform, you’re only part way home.

You can stop here, and feel better. You can slap on a band-aid. Do some positive self-talk and affirmations, meditation, journaling. Set yourself back on track for the time being.

But there’s a niggling feeling this won’t last.

Well, guess what? You’re right. It won’t last.

Because, if you stop there with your band-aid, if you don’t do the work, those the same inner fears are going to keep jumping up and biting you in the ass when you cross the lines again. Every time.

You need to go deeper.

It may take therapy — group, personal, talk, any flavor which helps is good. But whether you opt for counselling, meditation, self-help groups, writing it out, or some combination of the above, you need to commit to the work.

Figure out what your personal beasties are. What are the words that hurt you? The words that make you want to hide under the bed? That make you want to run away?

Once you find your trigger(s), you can face it (them).

But whatever method you choose, this time, instead of fighting your negative thoughts, instead of trying to replace them with positive thoughts using brute force of will, try something different.

Like many of you probably have, I’ve tried to will away my personal beasties. I’ve taped affirmations on my bathroom mirror, plastered them on the fridge, listened to them while drifting off to sleep, and recited them to myself morning and evening.¹

And nothing worked for any length of time. The beasts always came back. You can’t simply will away the negative thoughts.

Willpower — sheer force of will — won’t work.

Your mind is trying to protect you.

By stopping you from moving forward, your mind (your subconscious) is just trying to protect you from being hurt by failing, by rejection, or by whatever else you’re afraid of or you’ve been trained to believe.

When you charge headlong into something new — a new contract, a new position, a new pitch, a new book — or you go beyond the limits of what your subconscious believes is safe, your subconscious tries to protect you by floating up deterrents to warn you off — those negative thoughts.

And, if you persist in pushing on, if you manage to successfully ignore them, your mind will finally just call a halt — a time out. Stop you in your tracks by creating a block or a meltdown.

Simply pasting positives on top won’t work long-term because you’re dealing with your subconscious, with deeply ingrained beliefs and patterns.

And you can’t access those beliefs and negatives directly because you can’t directly communicate with your subconscious. No matter how many band-aids you slap on, eventually the negativity will ooze through.

But by coming at the issues obliquely, you can “retrain” your subconscious — teach it these negatives are not deterrents.²

Here are the steps to side-line the negativity

This technique is part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and is called cognitive defusion. When you step back and make a space between you and the negative thoughts, it allows you to see that they are simply just thoughts, words — not reality.

Acknowledge the negative thoughts, the words. I hear these words.
Acknowledge the thought for what it is — a fear, something you heard or read — something someone said to you or about you. I see you, fear.
Realize you don’t have to accept it as a truth anymore. I see you and I identify you. You are just a thought. Not a truth. Just a thought.
Notice your reaction. Do the words make you sad, scared, unhappy? Do they make you doubt yourself?
Now, comes the fun part. Instead of letting the feelings overwhelm you, instead of grappling with them head on and arguing with them, take a step back. Remind yourself, these are just words, not a truth, just words — and you don’t have to accept them or let them define you. You can choose different words, better words.
So wave these words away — they are there but they are not useful. Just waft them out of your way and let the words float off…
And the next time you begin to sense those negative words welling up, acknowledge them the same way and wave them off.

Baby steps — it will take some practice. But it gives you greater freedom in how you respond to your negative thoughts. You’ll find, with practice, you are able to react from a place of serenity and calm. You will no longer be actively struggling with all those negative feelings.

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It feels a bit Zen, a bit Yoda, and bit mystical, but it really isn’t. It’s simply using how your mind works to do an end run on your subconscious. You’re training it away from it’s knee-jerk protection reflex, from dragging up the negativity.

By all means, keep the affirmations, the positive channeling, your meditation practice, or tapping — anything and everything which keeps you centered and grounded and productive.

But don’t fight with yourself. Be grateful those protective impulses are there. Even when they try to get in your way.

Let your mind know it’s okay , though — because, you’re the firefighter, now. So though this project, this next step, this presentation, this new novel, whatever you’re stuck on might be scary, you’ve got this.