In today’s busy society filled with stress and anxiety, negative answers to normal questions have unfortunately become a default. How many times have you heard someone say the following in response to a general statement (or perhaps you’re the one saying it)?
A: “This is not going to work.”
B: “Why do you say that?”
A: “Because it didn’t work in the past.”
I often hear this type of negative dialogue when someone is talking about something they want to do, but feel insecure or have a fear related to the action. There are many ways to address fear and when we track it down to the root cause, we often find that emotional injury or stress is the originator.
Will someone who has negative default answers be able to look deeper into causes of their thoughts? I believe it’s possible and I’m here to share my insight, along with what you can do to turn a negative past into a positive future.
The above dialog allows us to avoid further questions to dig into the issue and from my perspective it’s the mind’s game to cope instead of resolve an issue and just move on with life.
The mind is using a killer argument, which can not be argued with and closes the door for a friend or supporter in that situation to help.
Now let’s defuse this argument and show how brilliantly wrong it is.
From my point of view this is a statement born out of a strong feeling inside of you. A feeling you can’t ignore. When asked for the reason behind this feeling you can only come up with the reason it didn’t work in the past, fully knowing, that this does not explain the strong feeling inside of you.
You have learned to listen to your feelings, because if you ignore them, they will come back even stronger in the future and may even causing you pain and suffering. The key in resolving this situation lies in understanding what it means.
If you feel like a victim to emotions, you most likely, by default use an avoidance strategy. Again, referring back to the original dialog which is also a clear avoidance strategy that doesn’t work. If you knew that emotions are actually there to beautifully guide you through life, then you can understand that this emotion you are having is showing you how to be cautious and keeping you safe.
Instead of thinking about how it “won’t work” again, you can keep an open mind to the knowledge you already gained and allow yourself to reexperience it from a different level of understanding, which will likely produce a more positive outcome.
Here’s what I challenge you to do to ensure a negative past can create a positive future:
Next time you hear yourself say “This is not going to work because it didn’t work in the past…” do the following instead:
- Know that you are not the same person now, than you were when you were making this negative experience.
- Think of WHY it didn’t work in the past and do not go back to those same reasons.
- Visualize what it will look like when it DOES WORK!
This of course is easier said than done, but practice makes perfect. Being aware of your negative answers is the first step. Next time you notice a default negative answer, take a moment to acknowledge it and then soon you will have the skills to incorporate one of these positive actions.
If you need help with this, then don’t hesitate to reach out to me. Helping people transform their way of thinking to turn negative default thoughts into positive ones is my passion.
