Mental Moment-Negative to Positive

I absolutely believe that positive thoughts breed positive outcomes. As of late, I’ve taken a little bit of a different stand on positive thinking. For years I’ve worked with clients to change negative thoughts into positive thoughts because I know how detrimental the negative thoughts can be and how incredibly powerful the positive thoughts are. However for some clients moving from a negative thought orientation to a positive thought orientation is a far reach. Think about it. I am asking them to go from one end of the continuum to the other. What ends up happening is that they end of feeling like they’ve failed because they can’t quite get there. In this sense of failure they lose confidence and self-esteem and go right back to their negative orientation. Many of these said clients are one’s who see things in black or white so rather than keep them in black and white thinking (negative to positive) I work to keep them out of that thinking so that the change is gradual and their thinking move up the continuum toward positive thinking. This is what I call neutral thinking. For example, instead of going from I can’t do this to I can (absolutely) do it I work with clients to find in between thinking like, it’s going to be hard but I can do this.

There can be/should be degree’s of thinking rather than everything being all or nothing, black or white, win or loss. This thinking is designed for immediate failure because if you can’t get all the way to the other side then why bother. Many of my clients have ‘lost’ before they’ve even begun. It’s much easier for them to go back to their negative orientation because it’s familiar. In this kind of thinking why trade familiar for fear of failure and disappointment. Good news is clients don’t have to when that change is more gradual and realistic.

Dr. Michelle

Photo credit: panicaway.com