Banishing Negative Thoughts

Banishing Negative Thoughts

I have written in the past about the effect of negative people. They can definitely cause problems in our personal trajectory towards financial independence and personal fulfillment. Yet, as unlikely as it sounds, I believe there is an even more sinister enemy. And the enemy is us. More important than ridding ourselves of negative people is banishing negative thoughts.

Negative thoughts pervade the daily milieu of mental activities. Often we can’t help it unless we are consciously moved to action. Without being mindful, we can upend all those wonderful things we are doing to build contentment into our lives.

In my humble opinion, the best way to avoid this is to be intentional.

Reworking Work

When I was working as a full time doctor, I would often find myself wandering around in a funk and not knowing why. It seemed like there was always a shadow or cloud over my head. It took me years to realize the origin of such feelings.

In my life as a primary care physician, I was constantly receiving negative messages. I was being pushed by hospital administrators to discharge from the hospital, harassed by drug seeking patients for more narcotics, and constantly scolded by the government for not filling out paperwork correctly.

I internalized these messages. They affected my mood, and often bubbled below the surface as I negotiated daily activities. They made me feel quite bad.

Banishing negative thoughts required me to leave my full time stressful position for a much more high impact but lower stress hospice job. Although this move got me half the way there, true change would also need to come from inside.

Celebrating Process

I have always been a rather accomplishment focused guy. I always held product over process. Yet banishing negative thoughts has taught me to revel in the process to a greater extant.

Often when I set out to accomplish something (write a blog, produce a podcast, etc.) in the past, my enjoyment of the task was closely linked to the perceived success of the endeavor. How many downloads did I get, or how many people linked my post.

While there always was some positivity, quickly the demons would come out if the response was not up to my expectations. I often found myself feeling bad not only for not meeting goals, but also far in advance of knowing the final outcome.

Now I try to stop and take a breath, and enjoy the activity for what it is. No matter how successful a particular episode of the podcast is, there is really something great about the recording process. I am learning to savor these moments by banishing negative thoughts regardless of outcome. By concentrating on the here and now.

Perfect Is The Enemy

And then, of course, there is the issue of perfection. Banishing negative thoughts requires to let go of perfect and accept good enough. Not only accept, but to rejoice in it. To be proud of getting the job done adequately, and ignoring the little glaring spots of incongruity that we often get stuck on.

It’s okay to be happy when winning the game even if we fumbled in the fourth quarter. We are for more likely to notice the foibles and irregularities than anyone else. Contrary to our annoyance, those foibles may even add character!

Final Thoughts

Sometimes we are our biggest enemy. Sometimes banishing negative thoughts is much harder than dropping negative people. Externally switching work situations may help. Internally, focusing on process and accepting good enough is a start.

Happiness probably requires a little bit of everything.