Greatest Hits: How to Stop Negative Thinking

It's Election Day in the USA. I am dropping a greatest hits episode that may be helpful. 

Being caught in negative thinking sucks the life out of you and your results. Continued negative thinking can cause extreme stress and anxiety. In this episode, you’ll learn: 

• Your thoughts are not facts
• How to change your thoughts so you create the results you want in your life
• Why I encourage being ridiculous with your thinking

Chapters

• 0:00 Transforming Negative Thoughts for Career Success
• 8:04 Developing Believable Positive Thoughts
• 14:46 Achieving Extraordinary Career Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everyone and welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me today and I love that you're here. If you've been listening to me, you're probably catching on that A lot of what I teach is that your thoughts create your results, and this is true for any area of your life. But since I focus on career based growth, I want to talk to you today about how to stop negative thoughts and how to create new thoughts that you get the results you want in your career. This work will help your career and, frankly, any area of your life.

Speaker 1: 0:30

When I first started to experiment with thought work about 20 years ago, I really enjoyed most aspects of my job in agency land, but every once in a while I would notice the littlest thing would knock me over. I would notice the littlest thing would knock me over. I call it the disease of broken shoelaces. And this is where I first started to experience doing thought work. I could handle the big problems client-based crisis, product recalls that would require multi-million dollar marketing and media plans to be rethought and renegotiation in less than 24 hours. I could handle leadership, getting arrested and incarcerated. I got a crisis. I'm your girl. I'm calm, I'm steady, I could focus. I could handle the big things. I could see opportunity in crisis. So these are all really positive strengths to have, especially if you're working in marketing or you're a strategist.

Speaker 1: 1:25

But again, I had this thinking, this negative thinking that I call the disease of broken shoelaces. It would be the little things that would throw me into negative thinking the printer is out of toner, a colleague not showing up for work, an error in a pivot table. It was the everyday, benign challenges that would throw me off, and people. This is why it's called work and not a hobby. Then I would go global with my negative thinking. One crack in my work day, the thinking. I would start then obsessing over everything else in my life. I would be obsessing over my after work plans that I'm never going to get a raise, that we're never going to get the exact share house we want on Fire Island this summer because it's going to be too hard. We better get on it now. And then it would be like, yeah, and that cute guy I just met like he's not going to call, not likely. I would be in this total toxic soup of negative thoughts and, hey, pop by my desk for a good time with a heat-seeking missile of negative thinking. Not fun, not cool. That was where my negative thinking would lead me.

Speaker 1: 2:30

And your negative thinking may not come from simple frustrations or broken shoelaces. Maybe you're super tight and you've got a handle on the smaller things, but you get knocked with the big things. Everyone comes from a different place. There's nothing wrong if you think negatively. It's your brain trying to protect you. Being alert, being precautionary, making a plan B is all super helpful, but it's when we let this thinking take over that it clouds our lens and it becomes the default way of being. Or, as my teacher likes to say, it's our toddler brain running the show. It's just an example of an unmanaged mind.

Speaker 1: 3:11

My career took off when I really started to get curious and question my negative thoughts Seriously. This is what changed everything for me. Examining my thinking increased my success exponentially. It wasn't reading the trades or the latest thought leadership paper or networking like a pro that changed my career path. Yes, those tactics helped, right, but when I made a regular practice of looking at my thoughts and giving myself some space between my thought and taking an action was when everything began to change.

Speaker 1: 3:46

Your thoughts are the biggest thing that you have control over, and learning how to manage them will create a larger impact on your results, more than anything else in your life. When you learn the difference and I mean really see the difference between what are thoughts and what are facts, you will be able to see that your thinking can change your life and your results. You'll begin thinking in a completely fresh way, because you won't want to be dumpster diving for thoughts. You won't want that trash in your head. I also found that I had less tolerance for certain types of content movies, media because I didn't want to put unnecessarily negative thoughts in my head. There was less like doomsday scrolling on Twitter because I wanted to treat this vessel of my brain and my mind with care. The space between your thoughts and your reactions is what helps you get leverage over your thoughts. Once you begin to find the pause between the thought and the action, you have a chance to make a decision to believe different thoughts that will serve you and your goals. It's the thing that will get you the most impact, the fastest results faster than anything else that you can try, faster and more effective than anything else you can try.

Speaker 1: 5:12

Recently, a client told me that she wants to get promoted and take on more responsibility at work. When I asked her why she wanted more responsibility, she said it's because she'd then be respected and that she would feel better about herself. As a career coach, I'm always curious about your motivations and I want to understand your thinking and your mindset. For this woman, the promotion wasn't about the money. It wasn't about the prestige of the title or the feeling of personal achievement. It was about respect and feeling better. But Joey's like huh. Tell me a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 5:45

She said she always makes bad decisions and that every decision she's made has led to an even worse outcome. That everything bad always happens to me. She said that she has the toughest boss and works on the most challenging project in the firm. She said she rarely speaks up in meetings nowadays because she doesn't want to say the wrong thing, she doesn't want to ask a dumb question. She said she's kicking her own butt for a minor typo she had last year in a presentation and she brings it up regularly as evidence for why she needs to stay vigilant so that she won't make another mistake. It's like that constant public caning of herself is going to keep her from not making another mistake, so she thinks.

Speaker 1: 6:28

She says she has to work harder than anyone else just to get the same acknowledgement and the same results. Because she only went to an average university and, my favorite, she's older than her peers and she's lucky that someone with her credentials got a job at a top company. She thinks that she needs to get the promotion and to be in a different position so that everything will be better. So there's a lot to unpack here and I have a ton of compassion for her mindset and it's not easy when you're in it because you think that an outside circumstance, like a promotion, a new boss or a different project, will make everything okay. It won't, because wherever you go, there you are. Look, I don't know whether or not she's in a sucky situation, I don't know, I don't, I don't work there but the reality is that she believes she is. So she is coming to her responsibilities, her daily output, her interactions with others, from a position of extreme stress and anxiety. So let me ask you how good would your decision-making skills be if you were always under extreme stress and had anxiety? Do you think you'd be able to be a candidate for promotion if you were constantly judging yourself, your age, your schooling throughout the day, reminding yourself that you don't measure up. What results do you think you'd be creating if you had this negative thinking? Now I know it feels impossible for her to change her thinking and she so desperately wants to do so. The good news is, she can change her thinking more easily than she can change her role, her boss or her coworkers.

Speaker 1: 8:04

People often ask me how to change their thoughts because we never were taught how to do it. Can you imagine if we taught children how to change their thinking? People always want to know how to stop thinking. The obsessive, negative thought that they keep chewing on. These are the thoughts they go to sleep with thinking and they pick them right back up again upon awakening. Sometimes they ask me to give them new thoughts. They actually say I need you to give me a new thought. I need to think differently. I get it. I've been there. Just tell me what to think so I can feel better, because I'm so tired of feeling this way.

Speaker 1: 8:41

But this work isn't the 10 steps to positive thinking because, my friends, that doesn't work. I can give you a positive thought and I can ask you to repeat the thought. Write out the thought, write it daily, use it as a mantra, but me telling you what to think doesn't work. One, I would cripple you, because when I'm not there then you wouldn't know how to trust yourself and build your own resources for how to make a decision and how to think. And two, it's my thought that, not yours. And three, you don't believe it because it's my thought, not yours. And on a side note, that would be advice giving and coaching isn't about advice. It's about showing you your mind and teaching you how to manage your mind so that you get the results you want to create in your career. It's about showing you your mind and teaching you how to manage your mind so that you get the results you want to create in your career. It ain't about vice. You need to be thinking new thoughts that are believable to you. The work is getting you into thinking and thinking new thoughts that are believable to you.

Speaker 1: 9:43

Now, in this moment, you need new beliefs, and a belief is just a thought you keep on thinking. It's a thought that feels relatable, relatable thoughts feel possible, and if something is possible, your brain will start to look for evidence on how it's possible. So, just like my client looking for evidence to prove that she's not good enough, you can equally find evidence to prove that you are good enough. Eventually you can equally find evidence to prove that you are good enough. Eventually you'll start interpreting the world through the new thought or the new belief, which is what we all do on default anyway. What's really neat about the study of beliefs and positive psychology is that, when we learn, our thoughts are not facts, is that when we learn, our thoughts are not facts. Something can be true for you, but that doesn't make it a fact. It's just the lens and the feeling you feel when you're viewing a situation. It's like looking in the mirror. You get exactly what you think you're looking for. When I learned from the experts that my interpretation of the world isn't always accurate because I filter out things that don't support my thoughts, my mind was like blown.

Speaker 1: 10:55

Our nature is to only include evidence that supports what we already believe. It's like a plot twist from a book or a movie. The writers are leading you one way, they're breadcrumbing you, they're showing you evidence of something and then wham total plot twist. If you can't 100% prove something, it's a thought, not a fact. So the next time you believe that if you'll get promoted, you'll gain respect, ask yourself if it's possible. That's just a thought On top of it, that idea that you're going to be someplace else, that a circumstance is going to make you feel a certain way. It doesn't you choose how you want to feel about a circumstance. The circumstance doesn't control your thought. You control your thought.

Speaker 1: 11:45

So the next time you believe something, ask yourself is it possible that it's just a thought? Is it possible that you're wrong? Make space for the idea that you might be wrong. You might be seeing something through an inaccurate lens. Then you have to decide what you want to believe or think.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Instead, I'd choose something that feels relatable. If you are coming from the thought that I always make bad decisions, then thinking I have the best brain and I always make the best decisions probably isn't going to be believable or relatable. So back off a bit, a bit. What is relatable for you? How about in this example, playing it out, it's possible that I've made good decisions. I'm sure you can find some good decisions based on this client example. Here are some good decisions that I know she's made just through this conversation. She went to university, she's capable of learning, she got a job, she's capable of making money and she cares about the quality of her work. I think that all of these are proof that she knows how to make decisions that benefit her career in life. She can choose to practice the thought. It's possible I can make more good decisions. It's possible I can learn to trust myself. It's possible that I can train my brain to change my negative thinking.

Speaker 1: 13:09

When you choose a new thought, hold space for the possibility of it. Practice it. Just for today. I'm going to believe it's possible. I can trust myself. You start to find evidence that it's true. And when you think a thought that is more relatable, your brain will shift from a state of stress and anxiety to one of possibility. It's relatable that you can learn to trust yourself. Your brain will do this naturally and find proof because it wants to survive.

Speaker 1: 13:39

Now, my lovelies, you have to be patient with yourself because it may take some time. If you've been beating the drum of I make bad decisions for some time, you're not going to change that in one day, but the change comes with both how often and how long you choose to practice the thought. Practice means you're not going to always be good at it, but if you make a decision which, if you listen to episode seven around making decisions. You remember that making a decision is a committed thought with a committed action. So you make a decision and then you practice, and if you get stuck, get a coach.

Speaker 1: 14:17

So, to recap, when negative thinking pops up, ask yourself is this true? Can I prove it? Separate thoughts from facts. Find a thought that's relatable, something that feels much easier to believe. Practice. The frequency and duration of your practice is what is going to bring you results. And when the thought becomes believable, can you strengthen it, can you up-level it?

Speaker 1: 14:46

Listen, being ridiculous with your thoughts is how you move from a negative thinking mindset to creating extraordinary results in your career. To paraphrase the famous ad man, leo Burnett, if you want to reach for the moon and fail, at least you'll get a handful of stars, and if I only reach for the sky and fail, I'm going to grab air. So, before I go, who are you getting support from? I'd be honored to help you with your career challenges and to create the growth and extraordinary success you want in your life. You can learn more on my website, jillgriffincoachingcom. All right, my friends, have a fabulous day and I'll see you next time. I'm Jill Griffin, your host of the Career Refresh podcast. My mission is to make workplaces more successful for everyone. So if you have ideas for topics or future guests, please email us at hello at jillgriffincoachingcom. Until next time, embrace possibility, be generous, intentional and kind.