Stress can be a good thing. It can motivate you to do things you never thought possible. But it can get the best of you and turn you into a real Negative-Nellie, making it very difficult to have the confidence you need to achieve your goals. Here are 4 tips to challenge negative thinking in hopes of reducing stress and negative emotions:
1) Name the negative thought.
What’s the actual problem? Some common types of negative thoughts are put downs; taking things personally, making things worse than they actually are, hopeless thinking, down playing your success, and assuming what others are thinking. Identifying the problem will help you determine what steps need to be taken.
2) Distract yourself.
Sometimes you just need to take a moment to step away from the situation. For example, say you’re in the middle of an exam and you’re stuck on a bunch of questions. You start to doubt yourself and you enter panic mode. Well if you don’t take a minute to step away from the exam and calm down, how are you ever going to tackle the questions when all you’re thinking about is how stressed you are? In this situation you could do some sort of mind puzzle (like counting backwards by 3), but there are many different ways to distract yourself (cough*Netflix*cough). Substitute your emotions with others, like watching a funny movie, instead of drowning your sorrows in depressing songs. Contribute by doing something nice for someone else. Pick up a hobby or exercise.
3) Come up with a positive thought for each negative one.
When you get rolling on those negative thoughts they can spiral out of control and they tend to exaggerate the problem. For example, let’s say you had a falling out with your difficult and messy roommate so they moved out and now you can’t pay rent. You might think, it’s going to be hard to find a new roommate…how am I going to come up with the money? I’m going to be put on the streets! You could subsequently think, at least there will be no more mess and I could always find a better roommate. Thinking positively does more to solve the problem than assuming the worst.
4) Challenge the negative thought.
Come up with a list of evidence for the negative thought and then a list of evidence against it. Say you think that you’re going to lose your best friend. Evidence for this thought might be that you just had a huge fight, but evidence against is that you’ve gotten through fights before. Lots of the time, the positive outweigh the negative. You can also let yourself imagine the worst-case scenario…can you handle it? What advice would a friend tell you? Challenging your thinking shows you that you can handle more than you give yourself credit for.
Now that you’re out of your slump, try and try again to solve the problem. If you still can’t figure it out, ask for help. Make it easier by spreading it out (if possible). Make a list or build a schedule and cut the job into smaller pieces. Finally, remember to reward yourself from time to time. You deserve it!
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