One Simple Idea to Shift from Negative Thoughts to Empowering State

6 min readDec 11, 2019

“Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within YOURSELF in your way of thinking.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The biggest problem with all the negative thinking is that it has self-perpetuating characteristic. One thought leads to another negative thinking and soon you find yourself in a spiral of negative thinking.

And the results is rumination about the past, anxiety about the future or blaming other people or circumstances, and if these thoughts are not controlled, they become the way of your life.

Here is a simple idea that can help you stop negative thinking instantly.

Shift your focus to something empowering, because as Tony Robbins said:

“Where focus goes, energy flows“

So here is the simplest advice, you could have ever heard.

Shift your focus to something empowering. By shifting your focus to something positive, you channelize your energy from negative thoughts to empowering state.

Sounds too simple … looks like just a woo-woo positive thinking advice.

But for most people it’s not easy to implement.

The advice is effective, but there is a nuance that if not understood, will never give result.

Most people when they want to avoid thinking about something, they force themselves to distract from the problem thought by using the wrong language.

And there comes a problem.

When you say that you won’t think about something or won’t do any specific action or behavior, this itself is wrong approach.

When you say you don’t want to do that particular thing or think a particular thought, you are confusing your mind. Actually, our words are the language of our conscious mind.

When we utter any sentence that have negative connotation associated with it, our mind doesn’t really understand it the way we want.

Let me explain this with an experiment:

Let me ask you to do something. please follow the direction.

Here you go.

“Don’t think of a pink elephant”

Read this statement and try to implement; means that you should not get a thought of pink elephant.

Did you participate?

If yes, I know your answer.

Yes, while reading this statement you were just visualizing how does a pink elephant look like?

But let’s also do another aspect of this experiment to prove the point holistically.

Now I ask you to think about some of your loved one.

What comes to you mind?

You see the face of your loved one.

You can do this experiment with any number of things and results will come this way only.

Here is the point, I’m trying to make. Our mind doesn’t focus on the ‘negative connotations’, it rather focuses on the very thing you emphasise doing or not doing.

And therefore this kind of statements aggravate the problem.

So the formula is to shift your focus to powerful ideas and think about positive things that you want to happen in your life.

This way, you stop giving energy to negative thinking, and it further leads to re-directing our energy to the positive things.

We all want to quit wrong behavior. We all want to not think about someone we don’t admire. We all think of some addiction all the time.

Why?

Because we have not exercised the power of our mind to focus on the right things with a right language.

You must be agreeing that we, humans are the best creature among all species on this planet.

Have you ever wondered a dog alone buying a flight ticket and travelling to a foreign country?

Or a cow coming alone and boarding a cruise to travel the world.

No! Other than humans, no other person has the capability to organize their thoughts to vast levels.

Humans have this powerful ability to create something first in their minds by visualizing and then create the stuff in the material world by organizing and taking action.

God or Universe or infinite intelligence has given the human beings power to create the world of their dreams.

This doesn’t require to be proved. It’s all evident. Humans have connected the whole world physically as well as virtually. Human being have touched moon, planning to set up a human colony on other planets.

Still so many people are so disturbed by the people who have hurt their soul or complaining that their circumstances are not fair to them.

These negative thoughts don’t go away from their minds. This is because we have chosen to behave as a victim of situation.

They forget that as humans we all have high potential to create our lives the way we want.

And it’s possible by simply shifting our focus to the empowering thoughts and solidify them with intention and taking inspired action towards them.

This is a deep learning I took from one of my personal life incident I had a very heated argument and debated with someone close to me.

The more I tried to shift my attention by telling myself that I won’t think about that person, the more that incident grew bigger in my mind and found myself in the spiral of negative thinking and anger against that person.

But then I thought that there must be some way there must be some way that high performers shift their attention from problem to solutions.

There must be some way that our spiritual leaders can smile in turmoil.

There must be some way to train my mind to bring peace and smile on my face.

And then I chose to shift my thoughts to my empowered goals, and decided to focus on those thoughts with sincerity and all good intentions. And soon with the shift of focus to empowering things, life started to look positive, and I realized that my energy got channelized to that other direction.

You must focus on something so empowering that it has the potential to transform your life.

More intrinsic (inner needs) the goal, better you’ll be pulled by that goal.

It might be easy for some of you, and too difficult for a few of you.

This entirely depends on the kind of attachment you have with that person or thought or habit. But sooner with practice, you can shift your focus to empowering thoughts.

Here is how you can do it.

Step 1: Think wildly about all your curiosities that gives a sense of joy on your face, and have feeling of excitement in your heart.

It could be working on a project that is so close to your heart, it could be a relationship or friendship that you want to enrich with beautiful memories or it could be just focusing on some of your life’s dream.

Step 2: ow just commit yourself to think about that empowering thoughts for next ten minutes.

Step 3: After immersing yourself with all good intentions, take some inspired action immediately. It could be picking a phone to someone who can help you empower further, it could be next email or it could be just getting out of your home and going to some other place.

Means whatever your heart says, go for it. Don’t let your mind interfere. And I am sure that you you’ll feel lighter and better immediately.

This is my personal experience and I hope you will benefit from it.