One way is to start monitoring your thoughts. When a negative thought comes up, try to pay attention to the thought without getting caught up in it. he idea is not to make the thought go away or prevent negative thoughts at all, but just to pay attention to the thought without judging it. This is hard to do at first, but it does get easier with practice.
What this does is give the person information about what thoughts are going on in their minds without adding more negative thoughts and without allowing those thoughts to affect the person’s mood. This process can quarantine the person’s negative thoughts without allowing them to multiply of affect their mood. Effectively, it breaks the negative chain.
A second way to get out of the negative cycle is to remind yourself that things are not so bad. This is where affirmations are very helpful. Some people place key affirmations around their environment (like on the bathroom mirror or near the kettle) where they see them often. This can be very effective in helping to lift your mood, which can lead to more positive thoughts, which leads out of the negative cycle.
A third way is by expressing gratitude for what you do have. Even when we feel very negative, there are still some things we can be grateful for. We may not have money, but we may have the love of someone in our lives. Or we may be having a difficult relationship, but we have our health. One way to regularly express gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal. Take a small notebook and each day write 3 things that you are genuinely grateful for. Be careful not to allow negativity to creep in - don’t use the gratitude journal to winge!!
A fourth way is to actively challenge negative thoughts. If you think “I never have enough money!!” ask yourself if this is really true. If you can think of one time when you did have enough money, then it isn’t true that you never have enough. Perhaps it is true that you haven’t had enough so far, but this doesn’t mean it will be true forever.
A fifth way to get out of the negative cycle is to think of 3 (or 5 or 7) positive things or things you are grateful about for each negative thought you have. So if you think “I never have enough money”, you can then think “I am grateful I am alive, I’m grateful my family is healthy, I’m grateful it’s a sunny day.”
