anxiety – Empowering Your Mind

Find the Good in Your Life

October 11, 2023 Linda-Ann Stewart Comments 0 Comment

Linda-Ann Stewart

Have you ever had someone rudely jump ahead of you in line at the grocery store, and it soured your mood for hours? Or had someone make a spiteful remark, and it ruined your day? Even if the rest of the day was pleasant, you likely dwelled on the annoying encounter and were sensitized to notice more irritations afterwards. This is a natural occurrence.

People are primed to notice more negative things than positive. Your brain was designed to help you survive, and does so by detecting threats to your life. If your ancestors hadn’t registered that the tiger was about to pounce on them, they wouldn’t have survived to pass their genes onto you.

Nowadays, there aren’t as many physical dangers, but the mind doesn’t distinguish between what might kill you and what disturbs you emotionally or mentally. The brain perceives them all as potential threats and spotlights what’s upsetting to you so it can try to help you survive.

The Negativity Effect

Scientists call this the Negativity Bias or Effect. Humans are more inclined to recognize and remember the negative, and brush off the positive. It’s the brain and subconscious mind’s effort to keep you safe.

It’s not an issue if it only happens once in a while, such as from an unpleasant encounter. But if you get stuck in viewing the world through this dark lens, it adversely impacts how you think and react in other areas. You only perceive what’s wrong, and can become cynical, irritable and depressed.

You need to be careful as this primal characteristic can overwhelm your life. If you’re always braced for something to go wrong, you’re predisposed to overreact to minor upsets or annoyances, and you notice them more. At the same time, you don’t recognize the good in your life.

You’re always in a fight or flight mode, stressed, anxious and exhausted. If this is the case, you don’t have enough resources to think clearly or be creative. You automatically react like you did in the past, without considering other alternatives.

Why It’s Important to Overcome This Tendency

The more you focus on what bothers you, the more incidents you notice, and this mindset becomes a habit. This ingrained attitude can lead you to expect the worst in people and situations, and can adversely affect your relationships. Your actions follow your beliefs and attention, so you could unwittingly create the very conditions that would confirm your pessimistic expectations.

Fortunately, you’re not a captive to this ancient bias. You can counteract your brain’s predisposition to lean to the negative by training yourself to pay attention to what’s good in your life. This will balance out that primeval tendency to always be on alert for threats. You have the power to decide how much of an impact unpleasant situations will have on you.

Instead of getting sucked into a negative frame of mind, you can train yourself to notice what’s good in your life. It takes time and practice, but when you persist in developing this skill, annoyances will bother you less overall. You may be aware of the irritations, but they won’t trigger you to fall into a well of cynicism.

What You Focus on Grows

As you begin to pay attention to what’s going well in your life, you’ll discover there’s more that’s good than you originally thought. What you focus on grows in your awareness and your subconscious mind will begin to scan your environment for other positive aspects.

Scientists say that “neurons that fire together, wire together.” If you dwell on the negative, you grow more brain cells that create discouragement, depression and helplessness. This is how pessimists are created. However, when you focus on the positive, brain cells grow in the areas for happiness, wellbeing and resourcefulness. Doing this develops optimists.

The One to Five Ratio

Scientists say that, in a relationship, it takes between four and five positive interactions to overcome a single negative one. If you’ve had an unpleasant disagreement with a friend, you’ll need several amicable exchanges with them to feel comfortable with them again. I think the same might be true of events. When you’ve experienced a distressing situation and it has soured your mood, it may take four to five pleasant incidents to improve your outlook.

You can be more proactive to start to feel better. Shortly after you’re upset, irritated or annoyed, find five things you’re grateful for in your life. Or seek out five items that make you happy in the moment. They can be small pleasures, like a flower, clouds floating in a blue sky or a child’s laugh. This will balance out the negativity, and help you shake off the unpleasantness you encountered.

Creating a New Brain Pattern.

You don’t have to let upsets or irritations control your overall mood or mindset. As you deliberately seek out more of the positive, you establish a new pattern in your brain. You create more positive leaning brain cells. By training yourself to pay attention to what’s positive, negative situations will bother you less. You won’t waste mental energy on minor negative incidents. They’ll reduce in importance, and you’ll increase your ability to handle them.

Not only that, you’ll be able to recognize more possibilities that you would have ignored before. Because you’re more open to them, your subconscious will search your environment for opportunities that benefit you. To uplift your entire life and overcome your ancient bias to be negative, spend time to enjoy pleasant moments and rewire your brain to be happy.

Affirmation:

I have the power and ability to choose where to put my attention. When I focus on more positive thoughts, I know that it impacts my life in a beneficial way. I become aware of when I start to slide into negativity, and decide to notice what’s good in my life. As I seek out the positive, I establish a new pattern within my mind that leans to optimism. This opens my mind to greater wellbeing and happiness.

Watch the accompanying video, Train Yourself to Be Positive.

As a focus mentor, hypnotherapist, and writer, Linda-Ann Stewart motivates women entrepreneurs and small business owners to focus and transform their business through deliberate actions that break through distraction and overwhelm to greater success, wellbeing and prosperity. Register for her FREE guide to Design Your Best Day at www.Linda-AnnStewart.com/guide.html. You can also contact her at LAS@Linda-AnnStewart.com or 928-600-0452.

Book Review-Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

December 15, 2021 Linda-Ann Stewart

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy
by David Burns, MD

Here’s a book that gives specific instructions on how to change the way you think about your life. It was created to help people erase depression, anxiety, procrastination, guilt, pessimism, as well as perfectionism, anger, stress and low self-esteem. And it works. In a study of people with clinical depression, 70-75% of them were “cured” three months after reading this book and following the exercises.

By becoming aware of what you think, and then either addressing it or disputing the reasons, you begin to change the mental processes that have sabotaged you. Many people resist writing down their thoughts, for various reasons, but doing so allows you to view them more dispassionately. No longer are you controlled by your moods or negative thinking, you are empowered to confront it and change it.

Awareness and claiming your authority are key. When you take the time and effort to pay attention to what you’re thinking and write it down, you’re taking control. Then, by responding to it rationally, more positively, you’re accepting your authority over your own thoughts. This will begin to change your life.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

How to Cope with the Inevitability of Change

August 5, 2021 Linda-Ann Stewart

by Linda-Ann Stewart

The world is changing all the time. Sometimes, it sedately plods along, but other times, change explodes and disrupts the status quo in a major way. When this happens, it’s normal to resist change, especially because it’s imposed on you.

Whether your choice or not, change is threatening and scary. Nothing will ever be exactly the same as it was. You don’t know what you may lose, and no one likes to leave their comfort zone or feel out of control. But there are times when massive change happens whether you like it or not.

How Change Affects You

For instance, a deadly pandemic creates a major upheaval in everyone’s life. As a result, you could have to find another job, or you need to move to a new location, or a loved one may become chronically ill. Unwelcome and unexpected change brings uncertainty, which leads to stress and ultimately to anxiety.

The Universe often nudges you out of your comfort zone with unwelcome conditions. If you don’t take the hint, it pushes more forcefully. The Universe wants you to keep expanding and evolving, and you can’t do that by staying in your old habits. You’ll have to let go of what no longer serves you to flow with the Universe and adjust to the new situation.

When change is sudden and affects your personal life, your normal response is to go into shock. Shock gives you time to process the reality of what’s happened. When you begin to emerge from the numbness, you may get anxious because you don’t know what to do. Or you do know what to do, and it’s overwhelming.

How to Handle the Uncertainty

When you find ways to handle the uncertainty, you feel more in control. Here are four steps you can do to take charge of your life.

1. Accept the change. The more you resist or deny the change, the less energy, resourcefulness or time you have to adjust to it. If you can’t accept the change yet, acknowledge that it has affected you. This is your first step to coping with it and moving forward.

2. Grieve the loss. For every change, something has to be left behind. There can also be opportunities, but often they come later in the process. At this point, if you have a sense of loss of what you valued, allow yourself the space to mourn. Only after grieving can you seek how to extract some good from the situation.

3. Deal with the anxiety. What can you do in the moment to reduce your anxiety? Maybe it’s to learn a new skill, do some research, or go to a caregiving support group. Or maybe all you can do in the moment is take some deep breaths to ground yourself.

4. Make a plan. No matter how small the steps might be, or even one tiny step, make a plan. This will bring you a sense of control, lower your stress, and allow you to think more clearly. When you take one step, figure out what the next two might be, and take them. Keep doing this until you build up momentum.

When you become proactive, you take charge and begin to adjust to the change that’s affecting your life. As you chart your course through the troubled waters, you can find a way to survive and thrive with the changes that have happened.

Affirmation:

I acknowledge that change has altered the course of my life. The Universe will guide me in my direction and give me definite insight into what to do next. I take the actions I know to take, and the next step now appears. Everything is in Divine Order and works out in my best interests.

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Book Review: Bex Beltran’s Journals

August 4, 2021 Linda-Ann Stewart

Bex Beltran’s Journals

I love journals that you write in. Research has shown that writing by hand is more effective than typewriting or using a keyboard. Using a pen or pencil engages the mind more, allows more inner communication, processes information better and remembers the material better.

Bex Beltran has created a line of journals to cover all sorts of issues, from intuition to lists, manifestation to a crystal journal. Some are for business and business development, like the networking followup, client record, or social media content creator. And others are for personal use, like one for goal setting, reviewing accomplishments, or self-care for a highly sensitive person.

I especially love that some have questions to inspire you, for insight or help you overcome blocks. In a way, some could also be called workbooks. At this writing, there are almost ninety of them, and she continues to add more. I’m sure there’s one that you’ll find valuable. I’ve linked to the page that lists them, so you can browse through these amazing, inexpensive journals.