Negative thoughts won’t STFU?

“Sometimes I can’t shut my negative thoughts up” - We’ve all been there, some more than others but have you ever considered naming that negative mf in your head? No? Why not?

I truly know that I am fabulous, so when negative thoughts arise in my head it's much easier to say "Stfu Delilah" than try and overthink why the negative thought even popped into my head in the first place.

I am what is known as a "brainstormer", I constantly have ideas and thoughts gushing out and if I don't write, speak or nullify them they will without a doubt play ping pong in my brain until I go crazy. And I'm talking crazy crazy - like don't look in my direction or I'll kill you with my death stare crazy.

We are all human, no one person has complete control over what pops into their mind but we most definetely have the ability to choose what we want to do with it. Now let me ask you this: When negative thoughts bombard you, what do you do?

A) Start analyzing why I'm thinking such thoughts and believe every thought has meaning.

B) Start thinking about something positive IMMEDIATELY.

C) Start overthinking and believe they are true just because I thought about it.

D) Start writing them down and begin crying.

E) Start rolling a blunt and carry on about my day not even giving it a second thought.

What'd you get?

Answer is, some of us have done them all, some none and some have done the non-listed but what we all have in common is finding a way to take back control of our own mind when it seems to be working against us. In order to take back that control you first must understand how your mind works meaning if you know looking at their Instagram story is going to send you down a downward spiral of crazy - DON'T do it and if you "can't help it" you better figure out a way to pull yourself out of it and fast. If you didn’t quite get the grade you were expecting on a recent exam and your grade dropped from a 92 to an 87 and you think your life is now over and you've spent the last 3 hours crying to your friends and practicing your "Hi, welcome to McDonalds, order when you're ready." Now instead of talking to your professor and finding a calming outlet you have driven yourself crazy thinking that everything is downhill from here and I am here to personally slap some sense into you because you know you're smart, so keep your head up my friend.

“False assumptions stimulate much of our negative self talk. Identifying them- and their consequences- can bring about change.”

— H. Norman Wright

Summer of 2018 I read A Better Way To Think by H. Norman Wright and it completely shifted the way I thought about thoughts - They are literally just thoughts. He went on to speaking about giving the negative thoughts a name and from that day forward I've named that mf Delilah, that bitch is mean.

At first I thought would it really help because it felt as if I was just allocating the blame to someone else but when I really thought about it - It's really just me, myself & I, who cares if I decide to name it something else especially if it helps me through it. Along the way I've now learnt that not all "bad" thoughts are bad, it's simply just what we label them when we personally don’t like them.

Give it a try and next month we can go over some great tips/tricks/activities to do when those thought become too much.