For all the great hype positive thinking gets, negative thinking has its own benefits as well that most people are not directly aware of, that is at first.
It’s only when they look back at the beginning stages of their journey do they see the power of it.
Negative thinking has the power of crystallizing into focus what it is you really want.
How?
Anybody can fill pages and pages of what they don’t want in their lives but when you do that, all you have to do is flip it around to see what it is you DO want.
When you do this, when you start writing out everything that you don’t want in your life, all the things you’re sick and tired of, you’re going to find tremendous energy building within you, energy to make the changes you need to stop experiencing all that pain in your life.
When you start listing what you don’t want, what you will NOT stand for, what has GOT to stop, you get closer and closer to that threshold point where you draw the line in the sand and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
NO MORE.
THIS IS IT.
I’VE HAD IT.
THINGS HAVE GOT TO CHANGE.
AND IT’S UP TO ME TO CHANGE THEM.
When you get to that point, turn a glass over to mark this special occasion – because it’s where it all starts.
Take a simple example of a kid who gets bullied at school.
The first few times invokes embarrassment, shame, humiliation but as the bullying goes on and on and on, the kid starts getting angry.
He does NOT want to feel humiliated anymore.
He does NOT want to feel helpless ever again.
He does NOT want to experience that pain of living in fear all the time.
Enough is enough!
He wants to learn how to defend himself so all this never happens again.
He takes a stand and draws a line in the sand and with the energy that gets created because of the power of negative thinking, he goes on to use it to get what he desires – he maybe joins a karate class, a weightlifting class, a boxing class, whatever.
The point is – that negative thinking got him to the point where he was so fed up, he HAD to change and in that process, energy that he never knew existed was created and he harnessed it positively and constructively to get what he wanted.
The key is to list what you don’t want and flip it around to find what is you do want and channel the energy you created when you focused on what you didn’t want toward getting what it is you do want.
There is a certain type of beauty in negative thinking in that it gives us access to that primordial center we all know is within ourselves – that raw, dark power that we often fear to tap into and access, because we feel we cannot control it.
But we can, so long as we have a positive use for it, toward something that will prove to be constructive and get us what we want.
Try it out right now to find the kind of energy you’ll be able to build for yourself.
Take out a spiral notebook and on top of the first page, title it:
“I Will Not Stand For:”
When you put pen to paper and start listing all the things you will not stand for in your life, you’ll find yourself writing fast.
And big,
And hard.
Real fast, real big, and real hard.
Because it’s far easier to think of all the things that you don’t want than what you do want.
You’ll start feeling the energy and you’ll start feeling the “purge” too. Your body and mind will start feeling “lighter”.
After each statement of what you will not stand for, THEN write what it is you’ll do to solve it.
I WILL….
You know what it is you want and what you will do to get it.
That’s the point where you want to be.
It’s not enough to look at a to-do list and try to pump yourself up to do it.
What exactly is it that you want and why?
When you answer that, it’s easier to get yourself to do the things you need to do.
It’s human nature to take more action toward avoiding pain than toward gaining pleasure so use the power of negative thinking to take advantage of that.
Use the power of negative thinking to find out what you want to say NO to.
Then say YES to its opposite.
Use the energy that’s created in the process to get you to do the things you need to do to get what it is you want.
There’s a reason why so many success stories have been rooted in hard times because it’s though those hard times that got them to harness the power of negative thinking and use it as their launching pad and then to use the power of positive thinking in their journey afterwards.
There is power in our darkest hour of negative thinking so long as you get to that point where you draw the line in the sand and say:
NO.
Then look at the opposite and say YES.
Harness the power and energy of negative thinking to get you off the launching pad and once you’re high enough, you won’t need that energy anymore and you’ll harness the power of positive thinking to get you to move forward instead.
If you don’t harness that power of negative thinking in the heat of the moment, it will slowly dissipate and all you’ll find yourself is wallowing back in your negative thinking, going down that dangerous spiral, having missed that golden window of opportunity to act on the energy it created just for you.
