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- Negative spirals are those patterns that make us slip from feeling positive and capable of getting results into a negative fog that make us feel all our actions are pointless and doomed to failure.
- In all negative spirals, negative results always starts with a negative thought and not with a negative action!
You head to the office. Is Friday. The weather is beautiful, but you don't see the cherry blossoms. Your mind is busy as you are waiting for the approval for funding of the project proposal you have been working on during the past month. You should know something soon but waiting is kind of killing you. You get to the office. First thing you do is to open your email box (even if in the name of efficiency you have promised yourself to start always working on the 'big tasks' instead of on solving the small issues collected in your email box). No news. You life maxima at work pray 'no news, good news,' but today the only thing you expect is this email from your boss. You get discouraged. Probably the project will not be approved. Your hard work will be for nothing, and you will be discredited in front of the whole team. Of course, you will not get the promotion. So you will just have to keep renting and wait for buying the house. Your phone rings. You pick up the call of your colleague on some random minor stuff. You don't say everything you wanted to say, and now all this is running it through in your head. You get very angry and start developing a terrible mood. No big day of progress in the office distracted by continuous negative thoughts. You get even angrier while coming back home immersed in the daily traffic jam. It seems everybody is horning at you today. You get home and open a bottle of wine that spills on the carpet. Just want to go to sleep. You wife arrives half an hour later and gets upset as you forgot to prepare dinner (and today was your shift). She is right, but the last thing you want to do right now is listening to her complains. You have many other important things in your life going on. You grab a bag of chips and go to bed. Maybe Netflix will help you to sleep.
Have you ever experience such a day? When nothing terrible has actually happened, but you get so paranoid that nothing seems to be in its place? Yes! All this mess just because we did not receive one email.
Negative spirals are those patterns that make us slip from feeling positive and capable of getting results into a negative fog that make us feel all our actions are pointless and doomed to failure. Mini versions of them are played out every day. Scary, right? But there is hope! Find the four necessary steps to play them around and fight them back!
Step 1- Recognize it!
The first step for fixing a problem is to acknowledge that this problem exists. If you are not able to recognize your negativity spiral, you will not be able to deal with it appropriately. Unless recognize them on time, negative spirals will grow and escalate drowning your whole day and the people involved in it without you even realizing there is no real evidence for your negative thoughts.
Step 2- Find the starting point!
Okay. It is happening. I am in the middle of a growing negative spiral. And now what! Where can I find the starting point? A big clue: In all negative spirals, negative results always starts with a negative thought and not with a negative action! So what was your negative thinking? Look back for this precise moment where all the negativity began and make a choice to think a different thought! Ask yourself: where does it all go wrong? What is the thought that is making it all go out of control? Just by finding this though you can make the decision to have a new positive one that will help to reverse the whole process!
Step 3- Fight the negative with positive!
And take action. Replace this negative through and develop your positive spiral! Considering that you have not received news about the approval of your project yet because your boss is clearly taking it into a favorable consideration and studying the way forward! Communicating a now always take less time than communicating a yes. Just a bit more of patience and you will be able to start working on the big project, being promoted and buying the house of your dreams!
Too often we allow our minds to assume the worst. We never think the best is going to happen and consequently, we invest our energies in worrying and complaining instead of on moving forward.
Step 4- Just do it!
One of the most effective ways to keep negativity in line is to worry less about thinking about doing it and worrying more about actually doing it. By actually working on it, we focus and invest all our energy in getting the rights things done instead of on elucidating about whether if they will happen or not. Just do it!
